Dallas Wings

Detroit titles, Tulsa exile, Arlington reboot

The franchise now called the Dallas Wings began life in 1998 as the Detroit Shock, one of the WNBA's earliest expansion teams, and did the bulk of its winning there. It took three championships in Detroit — 2003, 2006 and 2008 — and the first of those still stands out in league record-keeping, because Detroit became the first WNBA team to go from the worst record one season to the title the next.

The move to Tulsa before the 2010 season produced little, and the relocation to Arlington, Texas for 2016 gave the team a new name, a new market and a 7,000-seat home on the University of Texas at Arlington campus. The roster history runs through Deanna Nolan, Katie Smith and Swin Cash in Detroit, then Skylar Diggins, Liz Cambage and, since 2019, Arike Ogunbowale, who is the franchise's all-time leading scorer.

Then came 2025, which was as bad as anything in the franchise's history: 10 wins, 34 losses, a share of the league's worst record, and a No. 1 draft pick in Bueckers who spent her rookie year losing. Head coach Chris Koclanes was sacked on 30 September 2025, days after the season ended.

A rebuild conducted almost entirely in the close season

Jose Fernandez was hired as head coach on 28 October 2025, his first WNBA job after a long run in the college game, and general manager Curt Miller then spent the winter rebuilding the roster rather than waiting on the draft. Ogunbowale was re-signed, with Miller framing it around her status as the franchise's leading scorer. Alanna Smith, the 2025 Co-Defensive Player of the Year, arrived from Minnesota on a multiyear deal; so did the forward Jessica Shepard, who had spent five seasons with the Lynx and who had played alongside Ogunbowale at Notre Dame.

The rest of the work was less glamorous and arguably as important. Awak Kuier came back after three seasons in Europe. Li Yueru and Grace Berger accepted qualifying offers. Diamond Miller was traded to Connecticut for the centre Rayah Marshall. By the time the draft came around on 13 April 2026, the team had a functioning frontcourt rather than a hole.

With the No. 1 pick Dallas took Azzi Fudd, the UConn guard who had won a national title alongside Bueckers, and signed her to a four-year rookie contract on 15 April. The pairing was the reason much of the country booked its Wings games in advance.

The season: 27-17, and a statistical first

The Wings opened on 9 May 2026 by beating Indiana 107-104 and put together their best nine-game start since the move to Texas. The middle of the season was choppier — a 91-85 win over the Fever on 20 August was only their fourth in twelve games — but that night showed what the new roster could look like when it held together: Ogunbowale scored a season-high 32, Shepard a career-best 26 with eight rebounds, and Kuier blocked seven shots, a career high. Bueckers added 13 points and eight assists.

Fudd's contribution was cut short. She played 30 games before a knee procedure ended her season, which stripped the bench of shooting at exactly the point the schedule tightened. The team did not fall apart. Shepard was named an All-Star for the first time, Bueckers for the second, and Dallas won seven of its final eight games, including two separate six-game winning streaks — the longest the club has managed since arriving in the Dallas area.

Bueckers scored 26 in a win over Phoenix on 19 September that moved Dallas up a seed, then closed the regular season on 24 September with 25 points, seven assists and five rebounds in a 103-91 win over Seattle. That performance completed a season in which she became the first player in WNBA history to average at least 20 points and five assists while shooting 50 per cent from the field with an assist-to-turnover ratio above 2.0. Her final averages were 20.9 points, 5.9 assists and 4.1 rebounds in 32.8 minutes. Asked about the club going from 10-34 to 27-17, she said the turnaround was insane and that the previous year she had been "down bad".

A market that has outgrown its building

The commercial side has moved faster than the basketball. Dallas sold out its season-ticket memberships for a third consecutive year ahead of 2026 and sold out 18 of its 19 regular-season home dates at College Park Center. Chief executive Greg Bibb's numbers for the growth since 2023 are a 285 per cent rise in total ticket revenue and a 258 per cent rise in merchandise sales, with Wings kit shipping to all 50 states and 33 countries as of 21 September 2026.

Television followed. The Wings were on national broadcast 36 times in 2026, second only to Indiana, averaging 793,485 viewers across the season and more than 1.5 million on ABC and CBS windows. Three home games were moved to the 20,000-seat American Airlines Center and averaged 16,659; the 20 August fixture against Indiana sold out at 20,297.

The obvious conclusion — that 7,000 seats in Arlington no longer fit the demand — has been complicated by construction. The club signed a 15-year, $19 million use agreement with the City of Dallas in April 2024 to move into a renovated Memorial Auditorium for 2026. The city's bid to host the 2026 World Cup's international broadcast centre pushed that to 2027, and officials have since pushed it again to 2028. Council member Cara Mendelsohn has said publicly that the delay looks terrible for the city and is causing problems for the team.

So the fallback in the development agreement has been activated. Fernandez has said the Wings will play all their games at American Airlines Center in 2027, while Bibb has been careful to note that there is no finalised agreement and no league approval yet.

The series in front of them

Dallas went into the 2026 playoffs as the No. 7 seed against the No. 2 Golden State Valkyries, in a best-of-three. Game 1 was at Chase Center on Sunday 27 September at 6pm Pacific, Game 2 at College Park Center on Wednesday 30 September, and a decider, if required, back in San Francisco on Friday 2 October.

The matchup history is not encouraging. Golden State won all three regular-season meetings by a combined 37 points and held Dallas to 75.3 points a game, roughly 14 below the Wings' season average of 89.4. Veronica Burton's defence on Bueckers has been the specific problem — in the most recent meeting she held her to two points on 1-of-6 shooting through the first 15 minutes. Kuier's rim protection travels, 1.6 blocks a game across the season and five in three outings against the Valkyries, but Golden State has the deeper bench and the league's best-rated defence, and at least one published preview called for a sweep.

It is still the first postseason of Bueckers' career and the club's first appearance since 2023. Fernandez's line on her before Game 1 was that she plays with energy and makes everybody around her better; hers was that the postseason is what you play for.