With back-to-back wins, Dream look more like a team ready for a playoff run

It’s been very much an up-and-down season for the Dream.

They lost some ground in the race for postseason positioning with Sunday’s 95-91 overtime loss to the Fever.

They regained some of it Tuesday with a big road win over the defending champion Aces and a lopsided win Thursday against the Sparks.

But their inconsistencies will snuff their chances of making a meaningful playoff run.

After losing to Indiana, the Dream’s chances of gaining home court advantage in the WNBA playoffs felt like an uphill climb. They squandered a 10-point lead and had a chance to notch a high-profile win against one of the WNBA’s top teams.

“I feel like we fought hard,” Dream All-Star Allisha Gray said Sunday. “I mean, I just feel like we just came up short.”

The Dream came out swinging against Las Vegas in the first game of their four-game western swing, and had a knockout blow for the Sparks.

They looked like a different team — and in some ways, they were. Point guard Jordin Canada missed the Fever game because of illness, but she returned against the Aces.

She was their spark plug, finishing with 17 points, six rebounds and five assists. The Dream are a different team without Canada, and with more of their core intact, they better resembled the best version of themselves. Atlanta bullied close to the basket, outscoring Las Vegas 44-22 in the paint, and the Dream shot 35% on 3-pointers.

On Tuesday, they looked like a more complete roster, which is why they went out and got Angel Reese in the offseason. The Dream have been battling injuries most of the season, playing long stretches without forward Brionna Jones and guard Te-Hina Paopao.

With a win over the Fever, the Dream had a chance to move ahead in some tiebreakers. The loss made that road more bumpy, but as the Dream come down the final stretch of the season, they find themselves in the crowded race — with, guess who, the Fever and Aces — for two of the final spots for home-court advantage in the first round.

The Dream turned things around against the Aces, who had a 22-point win two weeks ago at State Farm Arena. Reese had one of her best all-around performances of the season, helping the Dream limit league MVP A’ja Wilson in the paint.

It demonstrated something players and coach Karl Smesko have said throughout the season: They can hang with the best of them.

“They know what we’re capable of, and when we execute the things we work on at a high level, we see how well it works,” Smesko said after the Dream’s win over the Tempo last week.

The Dream still have a pathway to gaining home-court advantage in the first round. Tankathon projects they have the fourth-easiest remaining strength of schedule. Their most challenging remaining opponents, the Lynx and the Liberty, have the two hardest remaining schedules.