Sometimes, losing pays. On Sunday, a lost, injury-blighted season did just that for the Wings, who won the WNBA Draft lottery and with it, the opportunity to transform their future with the top overall selection in April’s draft.
Not all top overall draft picks are created equal, of course. Dallas had the good fortune of holding the top two picks in the relatively weak 2021 draft, which they used to select Texas center Charli Collier and Finnish forward Awak Kuier. Three and a half years later, both women are out of the league.
This time, the Wings have far better luck. The prize of the 2024 crop is UConn star Paige Bueckers, the 2021 AP Player of the Year and a two-time first-team All-American. Injuries have slowed down Bueckers’ career at times, but this is a player who looks like a can’t-miss if she can stay healthy: a generational guard prospect because of her scoring and playmaking ability. She’s everything the Wings have been waiting on.
If they can convince her to join, that is. Bueckers coming to Dallas isn’t a foregone conclusion. She still has a remaining year of eligibility because she is part of the cohort of players who were enrolled in college during the pandemic. Bueckers could use the COVID year and return for one more season at UConn, although that is unlikely. The more concerning scenario is Bueckers balks at playing in Dallas and tries to force a move elsewhere. I would have written that off as paranoia until Wednesday, when The IX’s Howard Megdal put out a report suggesting this is not a possibility so much as a likelihood. Notably, Megdal said he “asked eight WNBA talent evaluators what chance they put on Bueckers’ representatives attempting [to force a trade]. Estimates ranged from 90 percent to 200 percent.”
It’s hard to sugarcoat that. This is not a one-player draft; USC’s Kiki Iriafen would be a great consolation prize as a replacement for the outgoing Natasha Howard. But Bueckers is a superstar in waiting who could raise Dallas’ ceiling higher than any other player available.
While Bueckers might not make the same highlight plays as last season’s No. 1 overall pick, Caitlin Clark, she’s still a gifted offensive player and one of the best guard prospects of the past decade. In fact, Bueckers was widely considered the best player in her high school class, a group that included Clark. There was a shift in that narrative over the next few seasons, partly due to Clark and partly due to Bueckers suffering a two-year run of lower body injuries that included joint damage in her ankle, a fracture in her tibia, a torn meniscus, and a torn ACL. But Bueckers’ strong (and healthy) junior season showed that she still has a good chance to live up to those lofty expectations.
A big part of what makes Bueckers so appealing is her efficiency. She ranked in the top 100 players nationally in both two-point and three-point shooting percentage last season. Take a look at her 2023-24 shot chart:
Bueckers shot above the Division I average from each of the five major zones. That includes a 74.4 percent mark at the rim, which is 17.5 percent better than average. She’s able to use her quickness and strength to drive to the basket, but she can also shoot efficiently at a high clip from beyond the arc. Same goes for the mid-range; Bueckers shot 14.1 percent better than the Division I average from there, too. That’s an area where Dallas struggled last season, shooting the fourth-lowest field goal percentage in the league on mid-range attempts.
More crucially, Bueckers is capable of finally filling the long-empty gap at point guard for Dallas because of her playmaking skills. While she is more accurately described as a combo guard, she has the ability to run an offense at a high level. As a freshman, Bueckers ranked 15th in the country in assists per game, and while she has spent less time as a primary playmaker in the ensuing seasons, she has shown it’s a role she can excel at. Last season, Bueckers ranked 32nd in the country in assist-to-turnover ratio. Through three games this season, she leads the country in that stat.
The fit between Bueckers and current Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale, who also likes the ball in her hands, might seem a bit odd on the surface. But it certainly could—and should—work. Ogunbowale is a very ball-dominant player, but getting her off the ball more could really improve the Wings offense. Per Synergy’s tracking data, Ogunbowale logged 85 isolation possessions last season, accounting for 9.6 percent of her total possessions. That percentage ranks higher than 98 percent of the players in the WNBA. But in terms of points generated per possession off those isolation plays, Ogunbowale ranked in just the 36th percentile.
Essentially, the Wings let Arike cook a lot, and she didn’t generate much scoring on a per play basis. But she did generate points on spot-up attempts, ranking in the 67th percentile in points per possession on that play type. So if Bueckers has the ball and Ogunbowale is spending more time spotting up, that should be a positive for this Wings team.
That’s not to say Bueckers ought to be used as a hedge on Ogunbowale’s worst impulses. Ogunbowale can and should still attack the rim often, in no small part because that would free up looks for Bueckers, an elite three-point shooter who knocked down 41.4 percent of her attempts from deep last year and 46.4 percent in the season she won the Naismith. Alternating lead ball-handling duties between the two of them will help set the Wings up for success, with one player always a threat to pop open for a catch-and-shoot look. There’s no keeping a backcourt like that off the scoresheet.
On the defensive end, Bueckers uses her size well. She admittedly wasn’t a great defender at the beginning of her college career, but she has developed on that end. She can guard three positions reliably in the pros and could potentially hold her own defending against power forwards, too. That versatility will be huge for a Wings team that struggled defensively last season, ranking last in the league in defensive rating and allowing opponents to shoot 47.5 percent from the floor, the worst mark in the WNBA. She turns in splash plays, too; the 6-foot guard averaged 2.2 steals and 1.4 blocks per contest last year, with the latter mark ranking seventh among all guards in Division I.
Then there’s the team-building implications. Beyond Ogunbowale and Bueckers, the Wings would likely run out a starting unit that features Teaira McCowan, Satou Sabally, and Maddy Siegrist. Sabally is a free agent, but the Wings are able to use the core designation on her, which prevents other teams from negotiating with her. The likeliest outcome of coring Sabally would be that she’d suit up for the Wings in 2024. Sabally missed a big chunk of the 2024 season, but in the 15 games she played, she reminded Wings fans why she was an All WNBA First Team selection in 2023. Sabally averaged 17.9 points per game and shot 45.2 percent from three.
Siegrist also missed time due to injury in 2024, but in the 27 games she played, the second-year forward averaged 9.4 points and 3.3 rebounds per game, both well above her rookie numbers. While she only shot 27 percent from three, Siegrist was a very good shooter at Villanova, lending hope that better spacing could unlock a jump there.
The Wings can run a four-out offense with McCowan or Kalani Brown in the middle, with Bueckers helping set the two forwards up for open shots. The gravity Bueckers brings to the floor theoretically opens everything up for the rest of the team, including providing space for whoever is at the five to work in the post in one-on-one matchups. Bueckers starting would also let Dallas unleash Jacy Sheldon, last season’s first-round pick, as the top bench guard. Sheldon struggled with her shot as a rookie, knocking down just 38.6 percent of her attempts, but in a lower-pressure role and with a full offseason of development, Sheldon could be one of the league’s best reserves.
That’s a good foundation. The Wings also have over $600,000 in cap space this offseason, and while a chunk of that will likely go Sabally’s way, it still gives the team a shot to bring in a big or a wing. There’s also the No. 14 pick in play. It’s unlikely the franchise brings in a huge name, but there are plenty of depth pieces available, from free agents like Tiffany Mitchell and Myisha Hines-Allen to potential draftees like Saniya Rivers and Maddy Westbeld.
Building around Bueckers isn’t just a one-year process, mind you. One thing Dallas can do this offseason is watch how the Fever navigate their roster with Caitlin Clark coming off her Rookie of the Year campaign. Will veterans want to come play with a transcendent young talent like Clark? If they do, and if Bueckers is as good as advertised, then the Wings can get a kind of blueprint for how to approach next year’s free-agent class.
Of course, none of this can happen unless the Wings actually draft and sign Bueckers in April. So Dallas has to do what it can between now and the draft to encourage her to join the team. It must nail the head coach hire. It must entice free agents who fit with Bueckers’ style. It must sell a better, brighter future under new general manager Curt Miller after years of only sporadic success since the franchise relocated from Tulsa eight years ago. The potential is there for Bueckers to turn the Wings around. Now the Wings need to convince Bueckers of that, too.
