ARLINGTON, TX — Coming out of the All-Star break, the Dallas Wings have plenty to celebrate.
The team is 18-9, boasting a winning percentage that would be the franchise’s best since 2006. Dallas had three representatives in Chicago for All-Star festivities. Paige Bueckers and Jessica Shepard started in Saturday’s game, while first-year guard Azzi Fudd won the 3-point contest, becoming the only rookie ever to do so.
Bueckers, a two-time All-Star who has been at the forefront of the team’s turnaround, said the weekend “speaks to the excitement” of what Dallas is building.
“We feel very confident in who we have on this team,” she told reporters Tuesday. “Obviously, Azzi winning the 3-point competition was huge… We kind of all expected it and knew that’s kind of what she’s born to do. And then obviously sharing that moment with Jess, that experience with Jess, just to be an All-Star with her, it was an awesome experience.”
The focus now turns back to the final 17 games of the regular season. The Wings are fourth in the league standings, with the eight current playoff teams having created some distance from the ninth-place Portland Fire (11-17, after a loss Tuesday). There’s plenty of movement possible within the top eight, however, and Dallas will want to secure as much home-court advantage as possible for the postseason.
The team had back-to-back practice days on Monday and Tuesday before heading into a stretch of six games in 12 days. Head coach Jose Fernandez has put the focus for the rest of the season on defense.
“For us to have the season that we want to have, we got to get better on the defensive end, and we got to rebound it better on the defensive glass,” Fernandez said Monday. “So that’s got to be our identity here in the second half of the year.”
Dallas’ defensive rating is sixth in the league, but the five ahead of it are currently on track to make the playoffs. The Wings gave up 40 points between the fourth quarter and overtime in their most recent loss to the New York Liberty. In three losses to the Minnesota Lynx, Dallas struggled to stop Olivia Miles and Natasha Howard from getting what they wanted in the paint.
General manager Curt Miller also noted the defense as a needed area of growth down the stretch.
“I kind of morphed from an offensive coach at the collegiate level to more of a defensive coach at the pro level, so I have anxiety for us to get better,” he told reporters Monday. “But I look forward to our growth at that end of the floor.”
A bright spot for the Wings’ defense has been Fudd, who Miller said was “ahead of schedule” on that end of the floor. The No. 1 pick’s active hands have led to averages of 1.7 steals and 0.8 blocks per game, and she’s taken on difficult defensive assignments consistently.
In the frontcourt, Awak Kuier and 2025 co-Defensive Player of the Year Alanna Smith will look to continue to make an impact. The obstacle there for the Wings coaching staff is sorting out the rotation.
Shepard, a rebounding force and breakout player on the offensive end, is averaging 33.3 minutes per game — sixth in the WNBA. With a three-guard lineup, that leaves the rest of the frontcourt minutes at the to be shared between Kuier, Smith, scoring spark Maddy Siegrist and the 6-foot-7 Li Yueru. The Wings have needed all of their skillsets at different points throughout the season.
“As you get closer and closer to the end of the year through playoffs, the rotation, the people that you play kind of shrinks,” Fernandez said Tuesday. “We’re headed in that direction as well, I think, in regards to versatility, and sometimes a lot of it’s opponent-based.”
The trade deadline also approaches Sunday, and Miller is tasked with considering the best moves to continue to push Dallas forward. The Wings have been active in the trade market since he took over as general manager, and the executive isn’t ruling out another move.
“Will anything happen before this trade deadline? There’s got to be mutual partners, and I always look for the partners that are trying to have two sides win in a trade,” he said.
Also crucial to the close of the season will be the continued brilliance of Bueckers, who the Wings are 0-2 without. She’s built an MVP case with her 20.9 points and 6.2 assists per game on strong efficiency numbers.
She’s also stepped up in the clutch, her average of 6.7 points in the fourth quarter of games, only trailing Kelsey Plum (7.7), who has played 11 less fourth quarters due to injury.
“She is a different player this year than she was in her rookie year in the fourth quarter, and that’s a credit to the work she did in the offseason,” Miller said. “What she continues to get better and better at is her voice. This has truly become her team. She’s really a leader, not only during games but on the practice floor, in the locker room, off the floor.”
Bueckers’ first game post All-Star break is against the Atlanta Dream, the opponent that has given her the most trouble early on in her career. In six games — five losses — between this season and last, she’s averaged 13.7 points and shot 36.7% from the field, both her worst marks against any single opponent. In two matchups so far this season, she’s been held to seven and 15 points.
Bueckers feels the Wings are a different team now than they were in those early-season games, however. They’ll look to prove that with a win on Wednesday night as well as continued growth through the rest of the regular season.
“We’re not going to be perfect,” Bueckers said. “But how can we continue to keep communicating, staying together, have a connectivity about us that we weather any storm? … Regardless of what the second half of the season looks like for 17 games, we want to go game by game, possession by possession, and let the results take care of itself.”
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