ARLINGTON, TX — When your season gets to the point where “playing spoiler” seems like a valid form of motivation, let’s face it, you’re reached the Bad Place.
Wings head coach Chris Koclanes said in his pre-game comments that playing spoiler is “all we’re talking about here down the stretch, with [Wednesday’s loss at ] LA, you got Seattle then you got Golden State — all these teams scratching and clawing for [the seventh and eighth WNBA playoff berths].”
The Dallas Wings (9-28) have trudged through
Injury Hell early, often and down the stretch this year, and when you combine bad injury luck with woeful roster construction and a first-year head coach who is learning on the job just as much as the youngest roster in the WNBA under his tutelage, that’s usually an express ticket to sports irrelevance.
The Wings, who lost 95-60 to the Seattle Storm at College Park Center on Friday, have a trump card against irrelevance in rookie superstar Paige Bueckers. What the 2025 season and Friday’s loss have shown over and over again, though, is that one special talent, even a generational one, is not enough to get over the hump and out of the cellar in this league. Without key players Arike Ogunbowale, Li Yueru and JJ Quinerly available on Friday, the Dallas offense never found any semblance of rhythm in the loss to Seattle.
Bueckers, who played just 22 minutes in the loss, woke up the sleepy home crowd with a leaning 3-pointer near the top of the key with 3:30 left in the first quarter that brought the Wings to within 14-10 after a sluggish start for the team that included two blown layups and several defensive lapses on the other end. The next time down, Bueckers pulled up for a smooth mid-range jumper to make it 16-12. But Seattle outscored Dallas 12-4 in the final 2:30 of the first quarter to take a 28-16 lead after one.
Bueckers scored half of the Wings’ points in the first quarter after scoring 44 of the team’s 80 points in Wednesday’s 81-80 loss at the Los Angeles Sparks. In case you were wondering, this is not a good trend, but it’s also indicative of the injury attrition the Wings are dealing with here at the tail end of the season. Maddie Siegrist is the only other dependable scorer available for the Wings at this point. It’s all this team can do to field a rotation of game-ready players at this point, much less create and seize on matchup advantages at this point in the season.
Bueckers and Siegrist accounted for 21 of Dallas’ 34 points in the first half as the Storm extended their lead to 48-34 at the break. Siegriest scored the Wings’ first bucket of the third quarter with 6:45 left in the frame to, but by that time the Seattle lead has grown to 17, 53-36, and Dallas was hanging on for dear life. There’s just nothing to cling to when no one on the court can score the basketball.
But the missed layups, foul trouble and inopportune turnovers mounted, and the game got away from the Wings as the second half wore on. The only good thing that came out of the second half was the rest Koclanes was able to give Bueckers as the result of this one became clear early in the third quarter. Bueckers did not come back into the game in the fourth, sporting her back-warming brace on the bench while the horror unfolded on the court.
Seattle rookie project Dominique Malonga led all scorers with 22 points. Siegriest led the Wings, who managed just 26 points in the second half, with 12 in the loss. This one was as ugly as it gets — a confluence of ugly circumstances that ended in grisly results.
Let me know if you’ve heard this one before, basketball fans — but the disaster-class we’re witnessing lies at the feet of the Wings’ front office. The 2025 Dallas Wings were never equipped to win, and what’s worse, is that in sticking this thing together with bubble gum, spit and duct tape, the front office assured themselves that this team would be unable to take any kind of meaningful step forward from a dismal 2024 season to what has devolved into a dreadful 2025.
