There’s nothing earned about luck. But in professional sports, there is a type of luck that has long been honored as a route to relevance, success and, in some cases, dynastic dominance.
These are the moments when basketball fans tune in to learn which team will be allowed to draft Lebron James. Or Victor Wembanyama. Or Caitlin Clark. In a draft lottery, teams have as much control over who gets awarded the first pick in the upcoming draft as they would in a game of roulette, but win/loss records, ticket sales, even small economies are affected by the outcome.
Enter University of Connecticut senior Paige Bueckers and the 2025 WNBA Draft, in which the Dallas Wings, the only WNBA team in Texas, have won the number one overall pick. There are years when a consensus number one pick is the result of a weak draft class. That is not the case with Bueckers and this draft.
“It’s going to be a good field [of players],” said The Athletic’s Sabreena Merchant. “But the gap between her and the rest of the class is sizable.”
Bueckers is a star basketball player; charismatic on and off the court, unafraid to speak her mind and cerebral with the ball in her hands. She is, by any reasonable predictive measure, a franchise savior.
“I do feel like she’s a player who could win an MVP, who will lead her team to championships,” ESPN’s Alexa Philippou, who has covered Bueckers over her entire college career, told The Barbed Wire. “There’s no doubt in my mind that she will make a professional team better, even as a rookie.”
The Wings, as much as any franchise, need her. The team moved from Tulsa to North Texas in 2016. Eight years and six coaches later, their win-loss record stand at 123-183. But building on a still-nascent-but-loyal fan base and the sudden growth of women’s basketball, the team has committed to moving into a new stadium in downtown Dallas in 2026.
There’s plenty of reason to believe that November 17, the day the Wings won the first pick in next season’s WNBA draft, will be as significant to Dallas basketball as the day the Mavericks traded up to select All-NBA star Luka Doncic in 2018.
“Paige is a huge name and a huge talent,” Justin Carter, who covers the Wings for D Magazine, told The Barbed Wire. “Getting her in Dallas, coupled with the team’s upcoming move downtown, has a really good chance to shift the direction of a franchise that has felt rudderless over the last few years.”
There is one potential problem with the plan for Bueckers to come to Texas and bring women’s basketball glory with her: She can simply choose not to.
There are rumblings that Bueckers, or perhaps someone in her camp, was not thrilled that the “rudderless” Wings received the first pick. Thanks to a medical redshirt season after knee surgery in 2022, and a rule allowing athletes an extra season of eligibility for NCAA athletes due to COVID-19, she technically would be eligible to return for another year at UConn following this current season. She currently makes more than $500,000 per year through endorsements, considerably more than she will make in her rookie season in the WNBA.
The Wings will not hold her draft rights in perpetuity, meaning a standoff could be possible. Or, given her leverage, Dallas might be convinced to trade the pick to the Sparks, who hold the number two pick and play in the bigger celebrity market of Los Angeles. The IX Sports reported that of eight anonymous “WNBA talent evaluators” asked about the idea, all of them assumed it was more than likely Bueckers would try to avoid playing for the Wings.
Without any direct intel into her future plans, it goes without saying that the Wings will want to make their franchise look appealing to Bueckers. With a history of mostly losing, that has required bringing in an outsider.
Less than two weeks before winning the draft lottery, Dallas hired Curt Miller as their new general manager. A longtime WNBA veteran, Miller has won WNBA Coach of the Year (twice), WNBA Executive of the Year, and coached the Connecticut Sun to two WNBA Finals. He was brought on to bring credibility to the franchise, and you can just about guarantee that Plan A, B, C, all the way to at least Y, start with drafting Paige Bueckers.
Why is the 6’0 Bueckers such a coveted prospect?
“She always feels one step ahead,” said Mark Schindler, a women’s basketball scout and analyst. “Part of what makes her game feel older than it is in some ways is that she just has counters for everything. No matter how you play her, she has a counter. It makes it so difficult to play against her and also makes her so efficient.”
A point guard who can score at above average rates and percentages driving to the basket, shooting in the mid-range, and from behind the three-point line, Bueckers was a freshman the same year as Caitlin Clark. Both were understood to be future stars and faced off in a rare ABC televised regular season matchup. Bueckers’ UConn Huskies secured a 20-point victory and the point guard tallied 18 points, nine rebounds, and eight assists.
“She was the better player (than Clark) four years ago,” Carter said.
Indeed, Bueckers became the first freshman in women’s basketball history to win the Naismith, AP, and Wooden player of the year awards. But since that game, the two have taken different paths. Clark has turned into a player unseen in basketball since Steph Curry, and Bueckers has been fighting off injuries, including two knee surgeries. But she has never failed to impress on the court, and she is currently healthy leading a UConn team that’s expected to compete for a national championship.
“In terms of players who can consistently be all-WNBA talents in their primes and who can elevate a franchise, I think that’s how I view Paige,” Schindler said. “I think right away she’s going to bring impact. Caitlin had a pretty special rookie year. I think Paige will have one in her own right.”
Unlike Clark, who has mostly stayed away from using her massive platform for political influence, Bueckers seems determined to use her voice to “share the spotlight,” as Philippou puts it, with marginalized groups. Upon being named the best collegiate athlete in women’s sports at the 2021 ESPYs, she took the stage to shift the focus onto the Black women who have done the legwork of building up women’s basketball while dealing with the greatest amount of discrimination, stating, “to all the incredible Black women in my life and on my teams. To Breonna Taylor and all the lives lost, and to those names who are not yet learned but I hope to share, I stand behind you, and I continue to follow you.”
“Being drafted to Dallas would put her in a really interesting position just because of the political, social, and cultural context of Texas in general,” Philippou said. “I don’t think she’s going to veer away from that. That is part of her DNA.”
She could be joining the Wings’ most versatile player, Satou Sabally, a dynamic “unicorn” on the basketball court who was raised in both Gambia and Germany and has made it a point in her career to speak on racism and reproductive rights. Sabally, whose shoulder injury is the biggest reason the Wings had enough losses to qualify for the first overall pick, was a top-five MVP candidate in 2023. A duo of her and Bueckers could prove a force on the court and off it.
The best case scenarios for the Wings’ future are compelling. Sabally and Bueckers paired with guard Arike Ogunbuwale, who last season broke the WNBA All-Star scoring record, would have a chance at instantly transforming from an eight-win team to a potential title contender.
The worst case scenario lingers just as prominently, though. Sabally is technically a free agent and has already endured a number of frustrating seasons with the Wings. Miller has still not hired a head coach to replace Latricia Trammell, who was fired at the end of last season. Finding a candidate who intrigues both Bueckers and Sabally will be crucial.
Don’t expect Bueckers to offer many insights into her future anytime soon. While her time at the most accomplished program in women’s basketball history has been full of accolades, there is one thing that she does not share with all the greats who came before her at UConn (Breanna Stewart, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore, Napheesa Collier, etc): a national championship.
Carter argued that returning to UConn seems unlikely, “because what happens if the Wings just get the number one pick again next year?”
We’ve all seen the results of the “Caitlin Clark Effect.” The “Paige” effect might be the next big thing in professional sports — wherever she ends up.
“She combines the off-court, cultural relevance with her clear on-the-court talent,” Philippou said. “That combination can bring a lot of eyeballs to Dallas and make them more relevant than they’ve ever been as a franchise.”
