Home opener is here, so what is this Dream made of?

The Dream’s Bria Holmes (32) blocks Courtney Williams’ path to the basket Saturday at Connecticut. (Sean Elliot, The Day via AP)

The Dream’s Bria Holmes (32) blocks Courtney Williams’ path to the basket Saturday at Connecticut. (Sean Elliot, The Day via AP)

If there is one certain similarity between the Dream’s absent star and the woman most counted upon to fill this hole in the basketball cosmos, it is that they both are made of the same raw materials.

It’s the stuff that starts to squawk like a debutante with no cellphone service when dragged month over month, year over year across the cheese grater that is a woman’s professional basketball schedule. The non-stop play here and abroad prompted the Dream’s Angel McCoughtry to call a timeout and sit out this WNBA season indefinitely.

A year ago, Tiffany Hayes might have chuckled to herself when she saw McCoughtry, who has been the Dream’s centerpiece since she was drafted first overall in 2009, betray her humanity in the training room after practices and games. There she would be, the perpetual all-star, packed in ice like the catch of the day.

“This year I’m icing my knees, putting my feet in the ice bucket. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, look what a year does,’” said Hayes, 27. “I definitely felt where (McCoughtry) was coming from.”

The Dream play their home opener Sunday afternoon at Georgia Tech’s McCamish Pavilion. No one is quite certain what to make of them here in their 10th season, largely because of McCoughtry’s absence.

How do you account for such a development as your best player, fit enough to play but frayed around the edges, announcing in January that she’ll require some significant down time come May? McCoughtry was the Dream’s North Star, the one player with leading-lady credentials. The face and the sometimes incandescent, sometimes disruptive personality of this franchise.

So, there is confusion. A preseason poll of WNBA general managers picked them fourth best in the 12-team league. The first AP power ranking had the Dream eighth.

In general, they feel quite overlooked. If that means winning from ambush, so be it. “I think people will be surprised. But for me, we’re not going to be a surprise because I know what we can do as a team. With or without Angel we’re going to put our best foot forward every time we’re on the floor,” Dream coach Michael Cooper said.

Pro basketball is such a monotheistic business, it having been proved time and again that championship outfits require one transcendent. The Dream don’t have theirs, not now anyway.

But know what? They seem genuinely excited to discover what they can become without McCoughtry’s overpowering presence.

“I’m really excited,” Hayes said. “Whether we kill it or we’re up and down, it’s all a learning thing. I really think we’re going to do well. There are a lot of eager people here ready to learn, ready to step up and do what the team needs. I think it’s going to be fun.”

Second to McCoughtry in scoring the past two seasons, Hayes is the most obvious successor to the leadership role. Yes, it has been established that the two of them are similar at the flesh-and-bone level. But that is where the likeness ends. For being the focal point does not come naturally to Hayes. Even when she was winning every game at UConn, Hayes was overshadowed by better-known teammates.

“I’ve always been the Robin to the Batman,” she said.

“I don’t mind (the change in role). Whatever I can do for my team I’m going to do it.”

It never has been Hayes’ way to put herself out there in the hot center of the spotlight. Cooper, who played with the famed L.A. Lakers’ “Showtime” teams of the 1980s, likens the personality of his shooting guard to that of Lakers center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a stoic, almost stately presence.

As difficult as it is to play outside one’s nature, Cooper and his staff are trying to prod Hayes toward a more outspoken style. A leader is not built in a day.

“My team has definitely wanted me to be that vocal leader,” she said. “I’ve always been a quiet person my whole life, so it’s definitely a challenge for me, but I’ve been working on it more.

“I’ve been told this my entire life: You have the qualities to be a great leader, you just have to talk to people. That’s something I don’t really do. I try to say a little bit every practice, or say a word here or a word there. If I see something, try to say something. It’s a long process for me.”

Want to make Hayes shift uncomfortably during an interview? Ask her if the Dream is her team now, at least until/when McCoughtry returns.

“I feel like that is what my coaches would want me to say. But again, I don’t feel like I’m a person like that,” Hayes said. “How can I say this is my team? This is our team. We are the Atlanta Dream. I’m not the Atlanta Dream,” she said.

Hayes does have some help, as was demonstrated in the season-opening victory at Connecticut on May 13. Three other teammates scored in double figures to accessorize Hayes’ 19 points, the most notable being second-year guard Bria Holmes. Playing a team-leading 30:49 in that game, Holmes went for 15 points.

The same Bria Holmes that Cooper labels “a budding star.”

“I think when a player like Angel is missing, someone has the opportunity to come in. Bria showed she can handle the load last year. I think she’s a very good defensive player. With her youth (she’s 23), she can get up and down the floor. She can play multiple positions (at 6-foot-1). She’s looking to take on the big shots.”

Hayes and Holmes came directly to this Dream season from Israel, where their teams met in the best-of-five championship series. Hayes’ squad took the title in four games. “(Holmes) is my teammate, so I didn’t want to rub her face in it. But she knows,” Hayes said with a small smile.

It’s helpful that they get along, given that a certain amount of cooperation between the two is going to be essential this season. Asked who is likely to get the ball when it’s score-or-lose time, now that McCoughtry is not an option, Cooper points first to the firm of Hayes and Holmes.

Life without their headline player will be an adventure on many fronts for the Dream. Consider the box office. Even with McCoughtry during the 17-17 regular season of 2016, Dream home attendance dipped eight percent from the year before, to an average of 5,614. That ranked them next to last in WNBA home attendance (overall league average was 7,655, up slightly from the year before).

“You win over more by winning more games. We have to put something good out there that makes people want to come see us, and I think this group is the one,” Cooper said.

It is much to ask of quiet players to make a great noise now. But this is their chance to show what they are made of, beyond flesh and bone.