Howard, Rhyne (2000- )

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    The Dream’s Clean-Slate Strategy Made Space for a Star: Rhyne Howard

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    Howard is a top candidate for the Rookie of the Year Award. Atlanta is rebuilding after a few rocky years, on and off the court.The Atlanta Dream were looking to start over.After a couple of rocky seasons — player suspensions, lots of losses, a revolt against a team owner — it was time to try something new.Nothing says clean slate like building a new roster.Atlanta kept only a few players from last year’s team: Monique Billings, Aari McDonald, Tiffany Hayes and Cheyenne Parker.Another piece fell into place when the Dream traded up for the first pick in this year’s draft and selected guard Rhyne Howard from the University of Kentucky. Howard made history as the only former Wildcat to be selected first overall by a W.N.B.A. franchise. Despite the power moves Atlanta made to ensure Howard was a part of their rebuild, she isn’t feeling any pressure to atone for the failings of past Atlanta teams.“I was aware of what has been going on, but we didn’t talk about that,” Howard said in a phone interview earlier this month. “We haven’t, and we didn’t even before the draft because it’s like, it’s in the past now. Everyone here is basically new, so we’re just looking to rebuild, which we have done so far.”Howard diving for the ball against the Phoenix Mercury. She is averaging 16.3 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesThe Atlanta Dream are in playoff contention as the W.N.B.A. nears the All-Star break, but just barely. They are 8-8 after beating the Dallas Wings on Tuesday. Their 6-4 start under the first-time coach Tanisha Wright was promising for a franchise with fewer than 16 wins over the last two seasons.Promising, yes, but not satisfying.The Dream haven’t made it to postseason play since 2018, when Nicki Collen led Atlanta to a 23-11 record en route to winning the Coach of the Year Award. It looked as though the heyday of Dream basketball might have returned.After winning only four games as an expansion club in 2008, the Dream earned six consecutive postseason berths, including three trips to the W.N.B.A. finals.However, by 2019 the Dream were again scraping at the bottom of the standings and would not win more than eight games in three straight seasons. There was turmoil off the court as well.In 2020, the Dream caught the attention of the sports and political worlds when the team’s players publicly supported the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat in Georgia who was running for a Senate seat against the Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler, who co-owned the Dream.Then last season, the Dream suspended guard Chennedy Carter after 11 games for “conduct detrimental to the team.” That May, guards Courtney Williams and Crystal Bradford were involved in a fight outside of a club in Atlanta. It wasn’t until after the season, when video of the fight surfaced, that the W.N.B.A. suspended them. None are with Atlanta now.Neither is Loeffler, who sold the team in February 2021 after losing to Warnock. There are lots of new faces, including Wright, Howard and General Manager Dan Padover, who was hired away from the Las Vegas Aces in October. A month earlier, the Dream hired a new team president, Morgan Shaw Parker. With every move, the Atlanta Dream have made it clear that there is no looking back, only looking forward.“It really was a way to come into something at the ground floor that I’ve never been able to do,” Padover said. He added: “I viewed it as a challenge, and I also knew I was going to be with really good people, and we were going to bring in really good players.”Howard had averaged 20.5 points per game in the 2021-22 season at Kentucky and left as a two-time SEC player of the year. She was named to the Associated Press first team three of her four years in Lexington.Her transition to the professional ranks has been smooth. Through 16 games, Howard is averaging 16.3 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game. She was named the W.N.B.A. rookie of the month for May.She leads the Dream in points and minutes (31) per game and is a top candidate for the league’s Rookie of the Year Award. So far, she has validated all that it took for Atlanta to get her.Five days before the draft, Atlanta traded its first-round (third overall) and second-round (14th overall) picks to the Washington Mystics for the No. 1 overall pick. Additionally, the Mystics can swap their 2023 first-round pick for the 2023 first-round pick the Dream acquired in a trade with the Los Angeles Sparks.“When we looked at the trade, we’ve known in the W that it’s really, really hard to get elite-level players,” Padover said. “And when you get an opportunity to get one, you have to really consider it.”He continued: “For us to get a player of Rhyne’s caliber to start this rebuilding process, we didn’t think we could pass it up. And I think the other thing that we looked at was not just the 2022 draft — we looked at the draft from 2020 to 2023, and there weren’t a lot of players that we could compare to Rhyne.”Although there is a lot of excitement for the path ahead, Padover is under no illusions that it will be an easy road. No one on the team has won a championship except for Wright, who won in 2010 with the Seattle Storm.“We do need to get to where we want to get from a competitive standpoint,” he said. “We want to be a consistent playoff team for years to come. We’ll see what happens this year, but I’m not sure we’re there yet.”Dream forward Cheyenne Parker is averaging 11.8 points per game. She leads the team with 1.3 blocks per game.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesAtlanta had dropped four straight games before beating Dallas on Tuesday. Opponents scored at least 90 points in three of the four losses. In the previous 11 games, only the top-seeded Las Vegas Aces had scored more than 80 points against the Dream.“Defensively, we need to get back to ourselves,” Wright said after a 105-92 loss to the Connecticut Sun last week. Atlanta averages a league-leading 17.7 turnovers per game. The Dream have conceded 15.1 points per game because of turnovers and another 9.3 points per game on fast breaks. But the defensive numbers aren’t all bad: Atlanta is just behind the Connecticut Sun with the third-fewest second-chance points allowed (9.2) per game.Nia Coffey leads the team with five defensive rebounds per game, but Parker and Billings are right behind her with 4.8 per game. Parker also leads the team with 1.3 blocks per game, and averages 11.8 points per game.“What we were dead set on was that we needed to make sure we brought in professionals who were going to be respectful of one another and also make the city and this franchise proud,” Padover said.What will that look like at the end of the regular season? Will a playoff berth or major league award show that Atlanta is moving in the right direction?“A goal of mine is to be rookie of the year,” Howard said, “but just being able to have an impact on this team continuously and consistently and just leading us to where everyone wants to go is enough for me. I’m not going to get any accomplishments without my team.”The Dream will have to fight to remain in playoff contention, but Howard leads all rookies in per-game averages for minutes, points, steals, and 3-pointers and field goals made. Early returns say she can be the elite player Padover and the Dream thought she would be. More

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      W.N.B.A. Draft: Kentucky’s Rhyne Howard Goes No. 1 to Dream

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      Howard, a senior guard, was the top pick after Atlanta made a deal with the Washington Mystics to move up in the draft.The Atlanta Dream, looking for a versatile player to help rebuild their roster, selected guard Rhyne Howard from the University of Kentucky as the No. 1 pick in the W.N.B.A. draft on Monday at Spring Studios in New York.Ahead of the draft, Dream General Manager Dan Padover said the team was looking for a player who brought “fresh energy and sparks something underneath our franchise.”The Indiana Fever selected NaLyssa Smith, a senior forward from Baylor University, with the No. 2 overall pick. At No. 3, the Washington Mystics chose Shakira Austin, a center from the University of Mississippi.Howard said she planned to bring to the Dream the same “competitive spirit” she had with Kentucky, where she made sure to stay “calm, cool and collected.”“I think that’s what really helped me to become successful, and I just really want to have an impact on the team,” Howard said, adding that she will “continue to make everyone better” in Atlanta.There is very little Howard can’t do. She is in the top 10 of almost every statistical category at Kentucky, and has scored the second-most points in program history for women and men. Last month, Howard led Kentucky to its first Southeastern Conference tournament title since 1982 when the team handed South Carolina, the 2022 national champion, its second and final loss of the season. Howard, who is from Chattanooga, Tenn., finished her senior year at Kentucky averaging 20.5 points and 7.4 rebounds per game.Kentucky, a No. 6 seed in this year’s N.C.A.A. Division I women’s basketball tournament, lost to No. 11 Princeton in the round of 64. But Howard’s career at Kentucky has helped draw attention to the women’s basketball program at a university best known for its powerhouse men’s team.“I’m very versatile, so whatever position I’m playing, I like to match for those positions,” Howard said.The Washington Mystics, who traded the No. 1 pick to the Atlanta Dream, used the third overall pick to select Shakira Austin, a center from the University of Mississippi.Adam Hunger/Associated PressTo be able to select her, the Dream shook up the draft last week by acquiring the No. 1 pick in a trade with the Washington Mystics. In return, the Mystics received the Dream’s No. 3 and No. 14 overall picks. The Mystics also have the right to swap first-round picks in the 2023 draft, which is expected to draw deep talent from around the country.Atlanta finished last season 8-24, the second-worst record in the W.N.B.A., and has missed the playoffs for the past three seasons. Adding Howard to the Dream’s roster immediately bolsters their perimeter game, which should help after the team traded guard Chennedy Carter to the Los Angeles Sparks in the off-season.“Some drafts are top-heavy; some are deep,” Padover said. “This one is probably the most deep more than anything.” He added that this year’s draft offered the best talent since 2018 or 2019.The Liberty selected Nyara Sabally, a 6-foot-5 forward from University of Oregon, at No. 5 overall. Sabally, who is from Berlin, scored a career high 31 points in Oregon’s final game of the season, a first-round loss in the N.C.A.A. tournament. She averaged 15.4 points and 7.8 rebounds per game in the 2021-22 season.“It’s amazing to be drafted by New York. It’s very surreal,” said Sabally, who joins the league two years after Dallas drafted her sister and college teammate, Satou. “I love that women’s basketball is growing and people recognize it, especially in such a big city like New York. I’m just happy that I get to play on a team like that.”Nyara Sabally, a 6-foot-5 forward from the University of Oregon, was the first pick for the Liberty, at No. 5 overall.Adam Hunger/Associated PressNyara Sabally averaged 15.4 points per game for Oregon during the 2021-22 season.Wade Payne/Associated PressThis year, 108 college players renounced their remaining N.C.A.A. eligibility to be considered for the draft, more than double than in 2021. International players and those who are no longer eligible to play in the N.C.A.A. will also be considered. But the chances of getting a spot on a roster are slim: There are 36 draft slots for the W.N.B.A.’s 12 teams, which have just 12 roster spots each. With only 144 roster spots in all, many players and fans are calling for bigger rosters and more teams, wishes the W.N.B.A. has resisted.One reason for the increase in college-eligible draft prospects may be the pandemic. College athletes are normally eligible to play four seasons over the course of five years. After the pandemic disrupted schedules, the N.C.A.A. added a special bonus year of eligibility for any athlete who lost playing time during the 2019-20 season.Should they not make it to the W.N.B.A. this year and still have a season of eligibility, athletes can return to their college (assuming there is still a place for them on the roster).Julie Roe Lach, the commissioner of the Horizon League, said this year’s draft class mimics the parity seen in the 2022 N.C.A.A. women’s basketball tournament, which saw six double-digit-seeded teams make it to the round of 16. None of the three top draft picks advanced beyond the round of 16.“You’ve got some of the names you would expect to see, but we’re seeing more schools with players that look like strong draft prospects,” she said. “That speaks to the increase of talent we’re seeing across the country of these great women basketball players.”Kierstan Bell, a guard from Florida Gulf Coast University, was drafted No. 11 overall by the Las Vegas Aces.Adam Hunger/Associated PressW.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert opened the draft by acknowledging Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner, who has been held in Russia since mid-February on drug charges that could carry a sentence of up to 10 years if she is convicted. “Getting her home is a top priority,” Engelbert said.This was the first in-person draft since 2019, and players and guests did not hold back from celebrating. Colorful pantsuits, rhinestone jackets and plenty of high heels and sneakers alike filled the TriBeCa event space. The Hall of Famers Dawn Staley, the South Carolina head coach, and Lisa Leslie posed with draft prospects before the ESPN coverage began. Oregon’s Sedona Prince lived up to her TikTok fame and was capturing scenes throughout the night.The draft capped a weekend of W.N.B.A. events across New York City, including shoot-arounds at neighborhood playgrounds and a visit to one of the city’s top sneaker shops. As the W.N.B.A. tries to increase its visibility, the league got the strongest New York City boost of all: The Empire State Building lit up Monday night in orange, the signature color of the W.N.B.A.The 2022 season starts May 6 with eight teams in action, including the reigning champion Chicago Sky. More