ATLANTA — The Atlanta Dream beat the WNBA’s best team, the Minnesota Lynx, on Thursday. Two days later the Dream beat the defending WNBA champions, the New York Liberty. Both opponents were missing key players, but the Dream have kept winning this season despite a long injury list and now they have the look of a serious championship contender.

The oddsmakers still don’t see it that way. Entering this weekend, the Dream were 10-1 to win the WNBA championship. Minnesota and New York were favored with odds of less than 2-1 and Las Vegas had the third-shortest odds at 9-1.

I say the Dream are underrated. That’s not just because of the victories over Minnesota and New York at Gateway Center. Atlanta (24-13) has won nine of its last 11 games and stands second in the league. The Dream won’t catch Minnesota (29-7), but they are in good position to earn the No. 2 playoff seed: five of their seven reaming games are at home and four are against bottom four teams in the standings.

The Dream are trying to hold off three teams that began Saturday within two games of them in the standings: Las Vegas, Phoenix and New York.

“I feel good about how we’re playing,” Dream coach Karl Smesko said. “This is still a really important stretch. I say we’re playing well, but there is probably a handful of other coaches who know their team is playing really well now, too. So, it’s hard to get any separation on anybody because there are so many teams that are really putting it together at the right time.”

Atlanta is among the hottest of those teams. The Dream’s 8-2 record in their last 10 games is second-best in the WNBA to the Las Vegas Aces, whose 10-game winning streak includes a 74-72 victory over Atlanta on Tuesday.

The Dream have already set the franchise record for victories in a season. The WNBA schedule has expanded from 34 games in Atlanta’s inaugural year of 2008 to 44 this season, but the Dream have a shot to top the 2018 team for the franchise’s best winning percentage in a season (.676).

“It means a lot,” Dream forward Naz Hillmon said of the franchise wins record. “We are trying to make Atlanta a championship team, a place to be. Obviously, it starts right now in the regular season. We do look at these wins and take pride in them, because it’s been a tough season.”

Injuries have been an issue for most of the summer. All-Star guard Rhyne Howard has missed 12 games, including eight of 15 since the All-Star break. Brittney Griner has missed four games since the break and guard Jordin Canada has missed the past six games.

Those injuries haven’t slowed down the Dream, who are 11-4 since the All-Star break. Now everyone is healthy except for Canada, who could return from a hamstring injury before the playoffs. The Dream are set up for a strong finish to the regular season and the franchise’s first playoff series victory since 2018.

“It’s been a successful (season),” Dream guard Allisha Gray said. “We’ve still got room for improvement, still got a ways to go, but I feel good about direction we’re going.”

That includes back-to-back wins over top contenders, even if those victories come with caveats.

Minnesota is the league’s top offensive team but played the Dream without the league’s leading scorer, Napheesa Collier (23.5 points per game). The Liberty are the WNBA’s second-best offensive team, but they were missing their top two scorers on Saturday: Sabrina Ionescu (19 points per game) and two-time league MVP Breanna Stewart (18.3 points).

“They still have a lot of really good offensive players,” Smesko said before the game. “Our defense has been playing better. We will need a great effort defensively.”

The Dream got what they needed from the start. New York didn’t break double digits in points until its 14th possession of the game. The Liberty trailed 22-12 by then. Atlanta’s lead swelled to as many as 19 points in the second quarter and 26 points in the third.

When the Liberty got the lead down to 64-53 with seven minutes to play, Atlanta held them scoreless over their next five possessions while closing out the victory.

“They were getting easy buckets, back cuts to the basket,” Hamilton said. “We each held each other accountable.”

Atlanta’s defense was so good that Howard’s shooting struggles hardly mattered. She missed 11 of 15 shots and finished with nine points. Gray picked up the scoring slack with 19 points and Brionna Jones had 17.

That’s been the pattern for the Dream: key players sit out with injuries or have subpar games, and other players raise their level of play. Now, Atlanta has a good chance of finishing at least fourth in the eight-team WNBA and earning home-court advantage in the best-of-three first round.

The Dream are good enough to be thinking about making it much further than that.

“There are more good teams in the league right now than I can ever remember,” Smesko said. “Who knows? Maybe the best teams just advance (in the playoffs). But I would not be surprised if this is just a wild playoff (with) things you don’t expect to happen. We want to put ourselves in the best position so maybe that great thing happens for us.”

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