Arike Ogunbowale Had Obvious One-Word Reaction to Paige Bueckers Winning ROTY

In Ogunbowale's opinion, it was inevitable.
Ogunbowale and Bueckers are teammates on the Wings.
Ogunbowale and Bueckers are teammates on the Wings. / Jerome Miron-Imagn Images
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Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale wasn't shocked to learn her teammate Paige Bueckers had won the WNBA's 2025 Rookie of the Year award. In fact, to Ogunbowale, it seemed that the choice was pretty obvious.

Not long after Bueckers's impressive accolade was made public on Tuesday, Ogunbowale posted a succinct tribute on her Instagram story: a re-share of a joint post from the WNBA, NBA and Wings commemorating the news, to which Ogunbowale added a quick "duh!" caption for emphasis.

Take a look at that below:

Arike Ogunbowale, Paige Bueckers, WNBA
Ogunbowale shared a joint post from the WNBA, the NBA and the Wings as part of her tribute. / Arike Ogunbowale / Instagra

The guard posted a similarly simple message in favor of a Bueckers ROY win back in August, after the rookie's blockbuster 44-point night vs. the Sparks.

Though the Wings (10-34) did not make the postseason, Bueckers nonetheless averaged 19.2 points, 5.4 assists and 3.9 rebounds in his first WNBA campaign, and was the obvious choice for the majority of voters (she snagged 70 of the 72 possible votes; the other two went to Sonia Citron of the Mystics, who nonetheless had a nice debut of her own).

Congrats to Paige on the new hardware.


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Brigid Kennedy
BRIGID KENNEDY

Brigid Kennedy is a contributor to the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in November 2024, she covered political news, sporting news and culture at TheWeek.com before moving to Livingetc, an interior design magazine. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, dual majoring in television, radio and film (from the Newhouse School of Public Communications) and marketing managment (from the Whitman School of Management). Offline, she enjoys going to the movies, reading and watching the Steelers.