Jessica Shepard had new beginnings in mind.
After seven years and five seasons with the Minnesota Lynx, the forward had developed into a respectable WNBA rotation player. For three consecutive seasons, Shepard averaged around eight points and seven rebounds, leading the league in field goal percentage for a successful Lynx squad in 2025.
However, she only averaged 20 minutes per game last season, sitting on the bench behind the star frontcourt duo of Napheesa Collier and Alanna Smith.
As she entered free agency this offseason, she sought a destination where she could continue to grow her game.
“I’m just coming into the season with a fresh start,” Shepard told The IX Sports. “Obviously, I spent a lot of time in Minnesota, and it was good for me, but also I was ready to have a bigger role and kind of help lead a team.”
Fifteen games into the 2026 season, Shepard has found that with the Dallas Wings. She’s averaging career-highs in points (13.7 per game), rebounds (11.5), assists (5.6) while playing nearly 11 more minutes per game than she did a year ago.
While some of the statistical jump can be attributed to more time on the floor, she’s been more productive as a playmaker than ever. Shepard’s 27.7% assist percentage is her highest since her six-game rookie season and her 11.6% turnover percentage is comfortably a career-best.
The forward credited the coaching staff and her teammates — particularly the high-profile backcourt trio of Paige Bueckers, Arike Ogunbowale and Azzi Fudd — for her rise this season.
“Coaches that believe in my abilities, that really allows me just to play like the player I am, and what I’m capable of, but also my teammates’ trust in me,” she said. There’s times when Paige will just give it to me and let me bring it up, and I think when you have such great scorers on the perimeter, it leaves the post matchup to be a little bit easier.”
Shepard said it wasn’t a difficult decision to leave Minnesota, and it’s not too hard to see why the forward ended up signing a two-year, seven-figure deal with Dallas. Wings general manager Curt Miller spent years coaching Alyssa Thomas, the league’s foremost point-forward. In his first offseason with Dallas, Myisha Hines-Allen was Miller’s prized free agency addition in part due to her playmaking potential, although it didn’t materialize in 2025.
The franchise’s decision-makers believed in Shepard’s potential, and so did the players who had seen her up close. Veteran guard Arike Ogunbowale played with Shepard at Notre Dame, while Smith also joined the Wings as part of the team’s frontcourt reload. When asked about the addition of Shepard, they both referred to her as “underrated.”
“I think Jess is one of the most underrated players in the league. The way that she can play in space is unbelievable… She had a triple-double with the Lynx last year and I think she could really get multiple of those in one season,” Smith told reporters before the season, correctly predicting what was to come.
Shepard opened the season with a near-triple-double in a win over Indiana, then got her first in a May 20 takedown of Chicago. The second was even more eye-popping, however. In a May 28 win against the defending champion Las Vegas Aces, she recorded 22 points, 20 rebounds and 10 assists, the first player ever to do so in a single game.
While the passing has taken off, she also feels she’s grown as a scorer. She’s fourth on the team in field goal attempts per game behind the three starting guards, but has been more than willing to find her own shots. Shepard displays a craftiness around the rim and has shaken defenders a few times with fake handoffs to guards.
Shepard takes pride in how she’s been able to expand her range over her career — she’s shooting 50% on shots between 10 and 16 feet from the basket.
“My 15-footer, I’m just a lot more confident in it than I was earlier on in my professional career,” she said. “I think going overseas helped me a ton, not necessarily like this last season, because I think I knew the player I was coming into this last season overseas, but I think the season before that really helped me grow and develop.”
Bueckers has certainly taken notice of the level of impact Shepard has brought into this season.
“Her impact is on the stat sheet, but it’s also so many things that are not,” she told reporters. “Just having her be a pressure reliever, her being able to bring up the ball, her being able to initiate offense, pass, screen, cut, rebound … defensively she can switch and guard one through five, and just leaning on her experience too, and her knowledge, and her IQ, there’s so many things that contribute to winning basketball that Jess provides.”
The next milestone that Shepard reaches might be landing a spot as a WNBA All-Star for the first time, perhaps as a starter. In the first fan voting returns, she was sixth among all players. For now, the forward said that the 9-6 Wings are still building chemistry, only scratching the surface of their potential.
“Every game, every practice, that we just have more time together. I think we’re starting to understand each other, all of us better,” Shepard said.
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