After a weird, late-season jolt to the system in the form of the FIBA Women’s World Cup break, the Dallas Wings (24-16) resume their playoff chase on Thursday against the Los Angeles Sparks (15-25). Tipoff at Arlington’s College Park Center is scheduled for 7 p.m.
Star guard Paige Bueckers and head coach Jose Fernandez return to the team with gold medals in hand, and will now have to shift focus to playoff positioning. Though the WNBA playoff field is already set, perhaps no team has as much hanging
in the balance of the last four games as do the Wings.
Dallas sits in eighth place in the league going into Thursday’s games, but they are tied with the New York Liberty and the Washington Mystics in win-loss record. They own the head-to-head tiebreaker with New York, but Washington owns it against the Wings. The Wings could still move up as high as the sixth seed in the final four games, but they would need help to do so.
First, the Sparks
Suffice it to say that any hope of moving up in the playoff pecking order and avoiding the juggernaut that is the one-seed Minnesota Lynx centers around the Wings winning out in their final four regular season games. That means first protecting home court against a Sparks team that comes into Thursday’s game on the heels of three wins in their last four games.
The Sparks actually solved the Mystics’ riddle in an 88-82 upset that put the Wings in position to potentially pass the Mystics in the final standings, back on Aug. 28. Nneka Ogwumike and Rae Burrell have powered the Sparks to those recent wins, but has the two-plus week break halted LA’s momentum? Will the fact that the Wings’ best player didn’t get that break come into play on Thursday? Or, will Bueckers & Co. be able to take care of business, as they did in rattling off four straight wins before the FIBA break?
Ogwumike and Burrell have not flashed with big games in either of Dallas’ two wins over the Sparks so far this year. However, one of those two came before the Sparks dealt their own star guard, Kelsey Plum, to the Phoenix Mercury before the WNBA Trade Deadline. The Wings can afford to marshal all their defensive resources against Ogwumike and Burrell this time around to lift Dallas to a season sweep of Los Angeles.
Playoff push
The Wings’ final four regular season opponents (which include two dates with the Mercury) sport a combined record of 53-109. That puts the odds in the Wings’ favor of finishing out with four more wins and a final record of 28-16. If they do that, which is still a significant ask, here’s their path to the six-seed.
Washington finishes the regular season with games at the Chicago Sky, at the Indiana Fever, home against the Connecticut Sun and at home against the Sky. That game at Indiana is a very losable game. If they drop one of those four games, in this scenario at least, the Wings would move past them in the standings.
New York finishes with games at the league-leading Lynx, at the Toronto Tempo, then two at home against the Atlanta Dream. A 2-2 split of those four games seems like the most likely outcome, so you’d have to give the Wings a good shot of surpassing the Liberty in the final four games of the year.
If the Wings can win all four of these, they have a good shot at playing their way into the six-seed and matching up with either the Las Vegas Aces, the Dream or the Fever in the first round of the playoffs. Remember, the Wings won the season series with both Las Vegas and Indiana, 2-1, this year. If the Wings are only able to pass New York, they will end up as the seven-seed, which means a matchup with the Golden State Valkyries. The eight-seed, which is at this point fairly unlikely, means getting fed to Minnesota.
There’s a lot to play for, specifically for the Wings.
Injury rewind
Since it’s been a couple of weeks, let’s reset on where the Wings are from a health standpoint going into the final four games of 2026. Azzi Fudd is, of course, out for the remainder of the season with a deeply troubling knee injury that required an arthroscopic procedure in August.
More recently, the Wings suffered another familiar injury setback. Alanna Smith, who has been in and out of the Dallas lineup with leg injury after face injury after leg injury, was lifted from the second quarter of Team Australia’s first group stage game of the FIBA Women’s World Cup against Puerto Rico on Sept. 4. She did not return to play during the tournament and is listed as out (lower left leg) for Thursday’s game against the Sparks on the Wings’ injury report.
Smith has been slowed significantly by multiple injuries this year after winning the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year award last season as a member of the Lynx. She has averaged just six points and 3.7 rebounds per game across 32 games this year, which are both low marks for Smith since the 2022 season. Her injury will mean a more focal role for Awak Kuier in the team’s last four games. Kuier has stepped into a larger role nicely in August, recording 22 blocked shots in her last six games before the FIBA break.
How to watch
The Wings will host the Sparks on Thursday, with the game being televised on the USA Network. Tipoff from College Park Center is scheduled for 7 p.m. CDT.
