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On Sunday afternoon in New York, the Dallas Wings defeated the New York Liberty, which registered as a mild surprise. But the way they did so is the part that offers some real optimism for Dallas, not only for the 2026 season, but as a foundation for the team Curt Miller and Greg Bibb built and Jose Fernandez is coaching.
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Dallas won, 91-76, but the results are secondary to the shape of their victory. The Wings registered 17 fast break points, improving their average on the season to 14.1 per game. Over a full season, that would rank as the best mark of any team since the 2012 Minnesota Lynx, of in-prime Lindsay Whalen, Maya Moore and Seimone Augustus.
Speaking of trios, many had wondered what Dallas would look like with Paige Bueckers (6′), Arike Ogunbowale (5’8) and Azzi Fudd (5’11) all on the floor together. Early speculation around whether the three guards could play extended minutes together — or even whether they would — only increased when Fernandez began the season bringing Fudd off the bench.
However, the three of them played 28 minutes together on Sunday, and the results were nothing short of spectacular. The trio scored 67 of Dallas’ 91 points, with an offensive rating of 117.9, and a defensive rating just 92.7. The Wings hit 15 threes, and 13 of them came from Ogunbowale, Bueckers and Fudd.
“I think when you look at numbers, you’ve really got to take a deep dive in the numbers,” Fernandez told me when I discussed the trio on Sunday afternoon. “When all three of them are on the floor together, you know, the numbers don’t lie, you’re right, and right now it’s finding the right rotations and the right people, the right group in place, because there’s only a certain amount of minutes in the game, and we’re very, very deep.”
Fernandez is right on both counts. Sunday was the best example of this so far, is hardly an outlier. On the season, in 91 minutes together on the floor, the Ogunbowale-Bueckers-Fudd trio has an offensive net rating of 124.3. There are 56 three-player combinations with at least 90 minutes logged so far in 2026, and they rank first, easily, among the 56.
“Yeah, I think just us getting reps and us being aggressive on offense, that’s three people who make plays, so people create their own shot and are aggressive on offense, and our playmakers as well, and it helps to have just spacers out on the floor,” Bueckers explained when I asked her about the group Sunday afternoon. “We have really good four and five men, so it’s easy to play off of them as well, so us just getting more reps, us getting better defensively too, and learning how to guard, learning how to proceed, to play off of each other, and use our offensive talent on that side of the floor. I think we’re learning to do that.”
Bueckers’ bird’s-eye view amplifies how important the Wings’ surrounding talent is. This past offseason, it wasn’t just that Dallas added bigs, but the specific bigs they picked up: perimeter threats and rim protectors like reigning WNBA Defensive Player of the Year Alanna Smith and Awak Kuier (.780 true shooting percentage!!!) along with the 6’4 playmaking and rebounding extraordinaire Jessica Shepard.
“The good thing is with Jess, because the way that we play, we only time the outlet to our point guards is after a made basket, right?” Hernandez said. “So we play pretty free and a different type of system … She gets it off the glass. Now she starts to break, that’s why she’s able to pass and get into some [dribble handoffs] and ball reversals and get downhill and set some inverted ball screens as well.”
Shepard’s assist percentage of 29.8% ranks 12th in the WNBA so far, second only to Alyssa Thomas among bigs, while her defensive rebounding percentage of 32.6 is second only to Aneesah Morrow. She is the answer to the question of who can play off the ball alongside the Fudd-Bueckers-Ogunbowale trio. Often, particularly after opponent misses, the answer is all of them.
With the four of them on the floor, in 71 minutes, Dallas’ offensive rating is 128.9, defensive rating 102.2. Among 51 four-player lineups with at least 50 minutes so far, that quartet ranks best in offensive rating.
And critically, they simply aren’t giving up nearly as many points as they’re scoring. The Wings are ninth in defensive rating, at 106.9, but are second-ranked in offensive rating; their 4.5 net rating is good for sixth in the league. And even against a jumbo team like the Liberty, Dallas ran even on the boards Sunday. If they play this well offensively, they don’t need to play shutdown defense. They simply need to defend … enough. It helps that one of the finest undersized defenders of her generation, 5’11 Alysha Clark, is on hand to provide veteran tips.
“Collectively, the tidbits that I give defensively is to our entire group, just because we have so many young players and players that are being asked to do things they probably haven’t had to do, and so for me it’s just finding ways to help us be our best on the floor,” Clark told me Sunday afternoon. She pointed out that defensive continuity takes time, which is the scary part of these early numbers: every minute they play together should only make them better.
There are numerous other factors beyond Dallas’ control that have also helped matters. The league’s offseason effort to tilt the officiating toward more free-flowing offense should play to Dallas’ strengths. Adding Fudd in the draft at the same moment almost every WNBA player hit free agency allowed Miller to find the talent which maximized his perimeter trio. And between Shepard and Ogunbowale’s playing history at Notre Dame, Fudd and Bueckers starring together at UConn, or the fact that both Muffet McGraw and Geno Auriemma’s offenses mimic much of the approach Fernandez brings to the table, there are no shortage of fast-forward buttons on this Dallas team.
Only two factors from the first seven games should cause observers to pump the breaks: the sample size itself, which still needs to stabilize, and Dallas’ two losses to the Atlanta Dream (one without Fudd), both times scoring fewer than 80 points. But nothing about the data looks like a fluke to me, while the latter simply reinforces for me that the Dream are not only a difficult matchup for the Wings, but that, at least to me, they are absolutely in the WNBA title conversation.
But while Atlanta is built to win now in many ways, this Dallas team is just getting started. Ogunbowale and Shepard are signed through 2027, Smith through 2028, and rookie scale deals for Bueckers and Fudd can run through 2028 and 2029 respectively, assuming Dallas picks up their options. (Spoiler alert: they will.)
Old heads will remember back in 2017, when the San Antonio Stars drafted Kelsey Plum to a team that already had Moriah Jefferson and Kayla McBride. Similar questions abounded how head coach Vickie Johnson would utilize the trio. Turns out: she didn’t, playing the three together just 40 minutes all season. Small sample size, but they managed an offensive rating of 123.3, best of the 85 three-player lineups utilized by San Antonio all season, on a team that finished dead last in the 2017 WNBA with an offensive rating of 95.7. Small sample size, but that’s an indictment in and of itself. Alex Montgomery played more minutes than Kelsey Plum for the 2017 San Antonio Stars.
Lest you think this is second-guessing: this is what I wrote about it at the time! And coincidentally, Johnson was in the crowd Sunday for Dallas-New York, seeing it all come to fruition.
Clearly, Fernandez doesn’t intend to make the same mistake.
“I think after seven games we have some really good numbers on what units are playing the best with each other, from an analytic standpoint,” Fernandez said. They’ll be tested Thursday night at home against the Las Vegas Aces and their undersized coach herself, Becky Hammon. There’s plenty of reason to think the Wings will be ready.
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