On the last day of the WNBA regular season, the Atlanta Dream and former Arizona Wildcat star Aari McDonald needed two things to happen if they were going to advance to the playoffs. They needed to win and they needed the Phoenix Mercury and fellow former Arizona star Sam Thomas to lose.
The Mercury obliged with a 15-point loss to the defending champion Chicago Sky, but the Dream could not take care of their side of the equation. McDonald and her teammates lost their second straight game to the New York Liberty, falling just four points short of the playoffs.