ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Paige Bueckers raised the expectations and excitement level for the Dallas Wings and their fans many months before she was even drafted by the WNBA team.
It started with the viral video of new Wings general manager Curt Miller’s reaction when the franchise won the draft lottery for the No. 1 overall pick only days after he was hired.
“I absolutely lost my mind. … We knew what that meant at that moment,” the GM says even now.
That was in November, when Bueckers was only three games into the three-time AP All-American’s final season at UConn, which ended with the Huskies’ 12th national championship and coach Geno Auriemma’s sixth No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft.
Within days after the draft lottery — five months before the April 14 draft, and six months before the May 16 season opener — the Wings had sold out their season ticket allotment. The team also has an expanded regional TV broadcast deal to reach 6.2 million homes, and will move into a renovated arena in downtown Dallas next season.
Bueckers is generating the same kind of buzz around the Wings that Caitlin Clark did as the No. 1 overall pick for the Indiana Fever last year, when they made the playoffs for the first time in eight years. Clark was the WNBA Rookie of the Year, and was The Associated Press 2024 Female Athlete of the Year.
“She’s going to impact us, and she just impacts winning,” Miller said of Bueckers, referring to her as a humble superstar.
Arike Ogunbowale, the fifth overall pick by the Wings in 2019, was the All-Star Game MVP last season and second in the WNBA with 22.2 points a game. She is also one of only three returning players with Dallas coming off a 9-31 season and missing the playoffs for the first time since 2020.
The Wings did acquire DiJonai Carrington from Connecticut in a multiteam trade after she earned the league’s Most Improved Player Award last season. They also signed seven-year veteran and 2019 WNBA champion Myisha Hines-Allen in free agency.
“There’s a lot of new, there’s going to be a new facility, new arena, new GM, new coaching staff … mostly an entire new team,” Bueckers said. “So just to build from where we are now, continue to build for the future. … Dallas is a sports city, so you feel the love already and the support and the excitement.”
Bueckers and the Wings’ other four draft picks were introduced last week before the start of training camp in a packed lobby at Dallas City Hall that included the mayor. The rally-like event was held only a couple of blocks from the historic downtown arena being fully renovated for the team, part of a 15-year agreement the Dallas City Council approved last year to facilitate the team’s move to its namesake city.
Still, Bueckers isn’t getting caught up in what everyone else expects from her as the No. 1 overall pick.
“The best thing I did last year was build my approach to the game and my ability to not care about expectations, and not set any expectations, because then you set a ceiling of what you can accomplish or what you want to look like,” she said.
“But just maximizing what I am every single day, trying to get better every single day, trying to get better as an organization, as a team, as an individual player, and growing every single day, is all that I’m really worried about.”
Adjusting to the WNBA?
Miller knows Bueckers, like every new WNBA player, will have to make plenty of adjustments as a first-time pro, such as new rules and a different speed and physicality to the game.
“Caitlin was one of the outliers that the adjustment was quicker for her,” Miller said. “There’ll be an adjustment, there’ll be a spotlight on her. But she’s handled so much of that throughout her young career already.”
Bueckers has plenty of people to turn to who have been where she is now.
“I mostly talk to a lot of the UConn alums, and just being a part of that network,” she said. “And they’ve been through every single thing that you can imagine with everybody who’s been through there. So leaning on them a lot and obviously just embracing your own journey.”
Big deals for Wings
The Wings in February announced their new television carrier in Dallas-Fort Worth market would be the same as the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and since the draft said that network has expanded to 12 markets in Texas. Wings CEO and managing partner Greg Bibb said that is the largest footprint for WNBA local broadcasts in league history.
Bibb said the Wings also finalized the largest sponsorship agreement in organization history, with financial service provider Albert becoming their official jersey patch partner in what he called an eight-figure deal over the next five years.
Bueckers vs. Caitlin in NBA arena
A month before Bueckers was drafted, the Wings announced their June 27 game against Clark and the Fever would be at the 20,000-seat American Airlines Center, the home of the NBA’s Mavericks.
Clark played in the Final Four with Iowa in that building two years ago. When the Fever return to North Texas on August 1, that game is still set for the Wings’ normal 6,251-seat home arena on the UT-Arlington campus.
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