Throughout their history, when the Seattle Storm have won WNBA titles, it’s been more than just two players that carried them to the top.

It could be argued that this year’s version of the Storm has four players that individually would be superstars on other teams.

Jewell Loyd and Ezi Magbegor were already All-Stars with Seattle, but the additions of veterans Skylar Diggins-Smith and Nneka Ogwumike changed the expectations for this Storm team.

After finishing with the second-worst record in the league a season ago, the Storm are showing signs of being a team capable of consideration as a contender. Seattle improved to 9-4 after Thursday’s win over Dallas, has won eight of its last nine and went 4-1 in the Commissioner’s Cup games of the past couple of weeks.

And that strong start came with Ogwumike missing a few games with injuries and Diggins-Smith taking a little time to find her game after missing last season following the birth of her second child.

The talent is there. And while the start wasn’t perfectly smooth, the Storm are hitting the point where coach Noelle Quinn thinks a fair examination can be made about the direction of the squad.

“I think our mindset is just continue to find ways to improve and grow in the game, finding cadence with each other, and rhythm and chemistry in the games — in the time that we cannot practice,” Quinn said. “I’d say 10 (games) but maybe a little more than that because they’re new to the system, playing with each other, but not just those two, other players as well.”

The depth of talent Seattle has pulled together was on display recently in a home win over Phoenix. Ogwumike, an eight-time All-Star in Los Angeles, was unavailable and Loyd — who led the WNBA in scoring last season — was serving as more of a distributor than a scorer.

But Magbegor dominated the interior, Diggins-Smith seemed closer to finding the form that made her a six-time All-Star previously, and Seattle won by 18 despite not playing particularly well in the second half.

A few days later, Ogwumike was back in the lineup and scored 26 points in a win over Los Angeles, highlighting again Seattle’s depth.