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Wings Select Paige Bueckers With No. 1 Pick in WNBA Draft

The UConn superstar is officially the newest member of the Dallas Wings.

Madison Williams

Paige Bueckers poses with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert after being selected with the No. 1 overall pick to the Dallas Wings in the 2025 WNBA Draft.
Paige Bueckers poses with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert after being selected with the No. 1 overall pick to the Dallas Wings in the 2025 WNBA Draft. / Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images
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Paige Bueckers is officially the newest Dallas Wings star after the team selected her with the No. 1 pick in the 2025 WNBA draft on Monday night.

It was projected that the Wings would select Bueckers when they won the lottery for the No. 1 pick in the draft. There was a report last year that Bueckers would prefer to not land with the Wings, but she cleared the air during the women's NCAA tournament.

The Wings ended up selling out their season ticket membership for the second year in a row once the draft lottery was announced and the prospect of getting Bueckers seemed very likely.

The UConn superstar is fresh off of winning the national title with the Huskies last weekend. It was Bueckers's first NCAA title, and UConn's 12th as a program. Bueckers is a three-time first-team All-American and a three-time Big East Player of the Year. She missed the 2022–23 season after suffering a torn ACL, but bounced back and returned to dominate in the last two seasons.

The Wings finished 11th in the 2024 WNBA standings with a 9–31 record.

Bueckers is expected to make her regular season debut on Friday, May 16 vs. her home state Minnesota Lynx in Dallas.

Now Buekcers will seek to win the WNBA Rookie of the Year award, following the lead of last year's No. 1 pick and Rookie of the Year Caitlin Clark.

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Madison Williams
MADISON WILLIAMS

Madison Williams is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated, where she specializes in tennis but covers a wide range of sports from a national perspective. Before joining SI in 2022, Williams worked at The Sporting News. Having graduated from Augustana College, she completed a master’s in sports media at Northwestern University. She is a dog mom and an avid reader.

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