A look at the Dream’s roster confirms they are essentially the same collection of players that Seattle swept in last season’s WNBA finals.
The circumstances are similar, too. The Dream again eliminated the top seed in the Eastern Conference en route to the finals, where they meets the team with the league’s best regular-season record.
But there was a different feeling among Dream players Friday as they prepared to leave for Minnesota to face the Lynx in the best-of-five finals that start Sunday.
“Last year it was, ‘Oh my god, we are here!” Dream All-Star Angel McCoughtry said. “This year it’s not, ‘Oh my god, we are here.’ It’s like, ‘We are here. Let’s go. We are meant to be here.’”
The Dream certainly have reasons to feel that way.
Injuries put them in an early-season hole, so they had to go on a run just to make the playoffs. They swept Connecticut in the first round, but center Erika de Souza then left to play for the Brazilian national team after the Dream lost Game 1 of the East finals to Indiana.
Instead of sagging without their leading rebounder, the Dream, boosted by a smaller lineup, overwhelmed Indiana for a pair of runaway victories. Now they get a chance to atone for losing in last season’s finals.
“We are over that,” Dream coach Marynell Meadors said. “We know what it took to get there, and now we know what it takes to win.”
The Dream had their chances against Seattle, which won the three games by a combined total of eight points. The Dream led by two points with a minute left in Game 1 and were down one point with 6.9 seconds to go in Game 3.
McCoughtry missed shots at the buzzer in both losses.
“For about a week you hurt, you cry, but you get over it,” she said. “When you get back here again, you reflect back on it and you think, ‘OK, what can I do different this time?”
The Dream will have to make do without de Souza for another game. The final game of the Olympic qualifying tournament is Saturday in Colombia, where de Souza is to take a three-hour bus ride to Bogota and catch a flight to Minneapolis.
Meadors expects de Souza to play in Game 2 on Wednesday.
“She is going to be exhausted but she will be ready to go,” Meadors said. “She is so happy to re-join this team.”
Once de Souza returns, Meadors said she’s not certain she will stay with the small lineup that features guard Iziane Castro Marques. The alignment allowed the Dream to use their quickness and athleticism to disrupt Indiana’s offense and led to lots of fast-break chances.
Also key for the Dream was the offensive re-emergence of McCoughtry, the league’s No. 2 scorer during the regular season.
In two first-round games against Connecticut and in Game 1 against Indiana, she averaged 13 points and shot 31 percent from the field. In the past two games McCoughtry averaged 26.5 points and shot 55 percent.
McCoughtry clashed with Meadors late in the first half of Game 2. Meadors sent in a replacement for McCoughtry when she was called for her second foul late in the first half, but McCoughtry at first refused to leave the floor.
Meadors said that’s not the first time it has happened and chalked it up to McCoughtry’s competitive nature.
“You just have got to be the veteran coach and just ignore it and don’t look at her,” Meadors said.
“I’m fine,” McCoughtry said. “That’s my competitive nature of wanting to win. You live and you learn. I’m a young player.”
McCoughtry, the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2009, won the rookie of the year award. She was named to the All-Star game this season and will play in her second finals.
Before the playoffs began McCoughtry said she feels like this is the Dream’s year to win it all. Now they get their shot.
“We are the underdog again this year but we are not going to embrace that role,” she said. “We are just going to go out and play and do what we have to do.”
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