ARLINGTON, TX — The Dallas Wings (10-34) ended their disappointing 2025 season on a high note with a 97-76 win over the playoff-bound Phoenix Mercury (27-17) on Thursday at College Park Center
The Wings bookended a 1-11 stretch to begin the season with 10 losses in the last 11 games of the season, but, hey, at least they stuck the landing with Thursday’s win.
Paige Bueckers ignited the Wings’ offense late in the first quarter and led Dallas with 24 points, eight rebounds and seven assists in the win
that gave Dallas a split in the Wings’ four games against Phoenix this season. Aziaha James came off the bench to chip in 18 points and eight boards in the win.
After falling behind early in the first, the Wings poured it on for 35 of the final 40 minutes of the year. They outscored Phoenix 57-32 in the second and third quarters behind an offensive onslaught from Bueckers, James and Amy Okonkwo. The trio canned 8-of-18 from 3-point range in the win.
“The results are coming. I promise,” Bueckers told the crowd during an on-court interview after the game. “Stick with us.”
Former Wing Satou Sabally led the Mercury with 14 points in the loss, which moves Phoenix into a tie in the standings with the New York Liberty.
The Wings will still carry the best odds of getting a second straight No. 1 overall draft pick in next year’s draft after the season-ending win.
With all the ugliness and the few bright spots of the 2025 season behind us, here are a few things Wings fans have to look forward to in the WNBA offseason.
Paige for ROY
Bueckers entered Thursday’s game already in fourth place all-time in points scored in a WNBA rookie season, with 668. She left the game with 24 more, moving her to third all-time, just ahead of A’ja Wilson’s 682 in 2018. The WNBA added four games to each team’s regular season schedule this year, but Bueckers piled up her 692 points in just 36 games played in her rookie year.
Bueckers’ only real competition for 2025 Rookie of the Year would seem to be Sonia Citron or Kiki Iriafen, both of whom play for the Washington Mystics. That being the case, the two teammates have cannibalized each other’s chances at the postseason award to some extent. Citron plays a similar game to Beuckers but is more perimeter-oriented and averages 14.4 points and four rebounds per game. Iriafen is a force inside for Washington, averaging 13.3 points and 8.5 rebounds per game in her rookie season.
Paige has this thing all but wrapped up by virtue of being fifth in the league in scoring in her rookie season at 19.1 points per game and ninth in assists at 5.3 per game. She scored 35 points at Phoenix early in the year, then followed it up with a new rookie record for scoring in a single game with 44 points in an 81-80 loss at the Los Angeles Sparks on Aug. 20.
Does Chris Koclanes survive the offseason?
My read on this one is yes. Although fans of the team have suffered through two nine-win seasons in a row, the fact that last offseason brought with it a new general manager in Curt Miller, a new head coach in Koclanes and the No. 1 overall WNBA Draft pick in Bueckers means that 2025 was really the first year of a new timeline. That’s probably little consolation for Wings fans who feel like their team occupies the innermost circle of WNBA Hell, but Koclanes was hand-picked by Miller out of the college ranks having never been a head coach at either the collegiate or professional level , so it would take calamity on a far larger scale than questionable lineups at times, long losing streaks or meme-worthy moments caught during timeouts.
Forward Myisha Hines-Allen told reporters on Sunday, Aug. 10 before the Wings’ game against the Mystics that the team fully supports Koclanes.
“We’re all behind Chris,” Hines-Allen said. “It’s his first year. I think that [negativity] gets tossed around. This is his first season being a head coach. He has a whole new roster, so we have to give him grace in the sense of like, he’s new to this, we’re new to this, it’s a whole new system and I think that’s the biggest thing. You can ask my teammates, you can ask anybody in this organization, we trust him. We believe in him. It goes both ways, too. Him trusting us, us trusting him, and just knowing our end goal. Building this culture into a winning culture so people want to come play for the Dallas Wings.
The stack of injuries the Wings have faced this season is a bigger reason for Dallas’ lack of progress in 2025 than are any of Koclanes’ perceived failings.
Will a new CBA get done?
The WNBA Players Association opted out of the collective bargaining agreement between players and ownership last year, and talks between player reps and league owners apparently went nowhere during the 2025 WNBA All-Star break. If the two sides don’t agree to a new one by October or shortly after, the possibility of a work stoppage in 2026 begins to loom. A new agreement needs to be in place before the league holds another expansion draft ahead of next seasons.
In light of the expansion draft and all the potential ramifications of a long-term fight between players and ownership that may come, odds are that when we next see the Wings on the hardwood, the team will once again look very different than the team looked at the beginning of 2025.
