ARLINGTON, Texas — Heading into the final quarter of the regular season, the Dallas Wings are in a slump.
The team has lost five of its six games since coming out of the All-Star break, dropping to eighth in the standings with an overall record of 19-14. It’s current-three game losing streak is the longest of the season, capped by Sunday’s 103-90 loss in which Minnesota Lynx guard Kayla McBride knocked down a WNBA-record 10 3-pointers.
Dallas isn’t quite facing total disaster. Every opponent the Wings have lost to lately is also in the league’s top eight, and they’re still on track for a playoff bid with a 5.5-game lead over the next team in the standings. Still, with first-round home-court advantage up for grabs and the regular season nearing its finish line, they aren’t playing their best basketball.
“Our team knows what’s at stake, right? You learn a lot about yourself individually and collectively during tough times,” head coach Jose Fernandez told The IX Sports after Tuesday’s practice. “We hadn’t experienced that in the first half of the season. Now we’re experiencing it, so I was really pleased. I thought our effort was a lot better in Minnesota, and our spacing and how we moved it. Today we just really worked on ourselves.”
Spirits haven’t been dimmed much by the recent slide. Fernandez and star guard Paige Bueckers expressed satisfaction with the team’s practice session and film study, the latter saying they’re “staying together, staying positive.”
“This happens to every team in the league throughout the course of a long season. We’re just trying to get through it,” Bueckers told The IX Sports on Tuesday. “The only way is through; the only one that can help us out of our little rut is us, and it’s all about the next game, the next possession. Not looking too far in the past, not looking forward in the future, but just trying to get better today.”
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Dallas has the chance to get back on track Wednesday at home against the 10-22 Toronto Tempo. The Wings have already earned two double-digit road wins over Toronto and now look to finish off the season sweep.
On the heels of McBride’s record-breaking outing, Fernandez stated simply that the key against the Tempo is to “guard the 3-point line.” Toronto is adept from beyond the arc, ranking fifth in the league in threes per game and third in 3-point percentage. Star guard Marina Mabrey makes 3.2 per game from long range, good for second in the WNBA, and put up 34 points in the last meeting between these teams.
The defensive end has been an issue for Dallas in losses this season, and especially as of late. The Wings have given up 96.7 points during their three-game losing streak. Fernandez mentioned communication as an area that needed improvement on that end, and Aziaha James felt confident that the team has the pieces in place to produce better defensive showings.
“We just have to do it,” James told The IX Sports on Tuesday. “We have the players and the people here to finish doing it. We just have to take pride in ourselves, have confidence, and get the job done.”
The struggles have not been exclusive to one end of the floor, however. The Wings’ lowest-scoring performances since May came against the stingy defenses of the Washington Mystics and Golden State Valkyries.
Bueckers said the team is working on “not getting stagnant” on offense and making teams work more, as well as continuing to play to its strengths in transition. She pointed to the Mystics, Valkyries and Lynx as some of the best half-court defenses in the league, praising their discipline. However, she said that Dallas’ offense can’t be shaped by what the other team does.
“We get out of our flow a little bit and we let their pressure or their defense dictate what our offense does, but we need to stay consistent in our execution and what we want to do,” Bueckers said. “… Just having more movement on the weak side, occupying the defense so they can’t just stand and watch and double team and load the paint.”
Recent injuries to key starters Azzi Fudd and Jessica Shepard haven’t helped matters for Dallas. Shepard, an efficient triple-double threat, went out early against Minnesota with an ankle injury and is set to miss Wednesday’s game after not practicing Tuesday. Fernandez didn’t offer a timeline for his all-star big.
“Jess is just our Swiss Army knife, so having her out, we’re missing a lot,” Bueckers told reporters postgame Sunday. “But we have a deep team, I believe in everybody that comes off the bench, so everybody’s just got to step up.”
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Dallas hasn’t had to play all that many minutes without Shepard this year, given her 32.2 minutes per game. Li Yueru and Maddy Siegrist is the Wings’ most frequent frontcourt pairing that doesn’t include Shepard, and the two have played 78 minutes together over 17 games in 2026. Alanna Smith, who will likely remain in the starting lineup Wednesday, hasn’t played over 50 minutes with any other forward besides Shepard this season.
Fudd has missed Dallas’ last two losses after being ruled out late against Golden State with right knee soreness. She practiced fully on Tuesday as the team went through five-on-five drills, but is officially questionable.
The schedule provides some optimism for Dallas down the stretch. Eight of its final 11 games are against teams currently outside of the playoff field, and the Wings are 13-1 against that group. The one loss came without Bueckers in the lineup.
They won’t be taking any opponent for granted, however, and a pair of matchups against the Indiana Fever are still ahead as potential standings-swinging games. Dallas wants to be playing its best basketball heading into the playoffs, and still has steps to take to get there.
“You want to be playing your best basketball, and we know we’re not,” Fernandez said. “But we’re the only ones who can change it.”
