Atlanta Dream star Angel McCoughtry is a major doubt for this Sunday’s historic WNBA pre-season game against Great Britain due to a knee injury.
The USA international sustained the injury earlier this week in pre-season training before flying out to Manchester yesterday evening. It’s a blow to the Atlanta squad, who hope to go one better this season and win the WNBA crown.
The Dream will arrive in the north-west of England, not only to play a Great Britain side, who themselves are using this game as a warm-up to next month’s Eurobasket in Poland, but they arrive in Manchester to promote the sport of women’s basketball further – as the Dream look to get more young females involved.
McCoughtry averaged 26.7ppg in last season’s WNBA Playoffs. as Atlanta finished runners-up to the Seattle Storm, led by Sue Bird and Australian Lauren Jackson.
Despite the concern, Atlanta coach Marynell Meadors will be expected to play around and share playing time with her bench, as their season starts against New York Liberty on June 5th.
This will be the first time that a WNBA side has come to Great Britain to play a competitive fixture. It follows on from the successful NBA Europe pre-season, and the more recent regular season games between the New Jersey Nets and Toronto Raptors.
Great Britain are well into their pre-season training, having just competed in a four-team tournament in Guildford, which included Germany, Latvia and Cuba. Tom Maher’s side are currently in Turkey, competing in the Antalya Invitational. They defeated Montenegro yesterday 80-58.
