WNBA draftee Paige Bueckers lights the Empire State Constructing on Monday in New York Metropolis. Bueckers, a standout on the College of Connecticut, is anticipated to be the highest choose in Monday night’s WNBA draft.
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Barely per week after cutting down the nets on the ladies’s Remaining 4, Paige Bueckers is anticipated to get one more jewel in her crown.
At Monday evening’s WNBA Draft, the 23-year-old combo guard is anticipated to be chosen first general by the Dallas Wings. The choose might rework the franchise, which hasn’t received a title since 2008 when the workforce was in Detroit. The Wings solely received 9 video games final 12 months.
There, Bueckers is poised to affix the league’s rising roster of superstars — from newcomers like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese to veterans like A’ja Wilson and Sabrina Ionescu — who delivered a massive boom in audience for the league in 2024.
The Wings received the highest general choose in November’s WNBA Draft Lottery, which was broadly considered as a Paige Bueckers sweepstakes. Days later, Dallas introduced it had sold out of season tickets for 2025.
“We all know what No. 1 draft picks can do to this league, how they’ve impacted different franchises,” stated Dallas Wings common supervisor Curt Miller in January. “It is a really, really thrilling time to have the No. 1 choose.”
Bueckers’ journey
Excessive expectations are nothing new for Bueckers. She was the highest recruit within the nation popping out of highschool in 2020 — an achievement itself in a category that additionally included future stars Clark, Reese and Cameron Brink.
And the hype was actual: In her freshman 12 months at UConn, Bueckers was every thing she had been promised to be. She averaged 20 factors per sport, led the Huskies to the Remaining 4 and have become the primary freshman to win every of 4 completely different main nationwide Participant of the Yr awards.
However then accidents sidelined her for many of the following two years. And her return within the 2023-24 season was overshadowed by the undefeated South Carolina Gamecocks championship run and Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes, who beat Bueckers’ Huskies within the Remaining 4.
Bueckers opted to return for her senior 12 months relatively than enter the WNBA Draft in 2024, when she was projected to be a top-three choose (after Clark, taken first general by the Indiana Fever, and maybe Brink, the Stanford star ahead who was in the end chosen second by the Los Angeles Sparks).
And it paid off. Simply over per week in the past, Bueckers introduced residence that coveted championship for UConn, the powerhouse’s first title in practically a decade, with a dominant 82-59 win over South Carolina through which Bueckers scored 17 factors and added six rebounds.
“It has been a narrative of resilience, of gratitude, of adversity, of overcoming adversity, simply responding to life’s challenges,” Bueckers informed reporters after the championship sport. “To be rewarded with one thing like this, you may’t actually even put it into phrases.”
Different WNBA Draft storylines
Monday’s draft can be poised to reshape the struggling Washington Mystics, who’ve completed with a shedding file in 4 of the previous 5 seasons. Final 12 months’s efficiency earned the Mystics the No. 4 choose, and trades netted them the No. 3 and No. 6 picks. Their targets may embody forwards Kiki Iriafen of USC or Aneesah Morrow of LSU, or Notre Dame guard Sonia Citron.
Ahead Kiki Iriafen, of the College of Southern California Trojans, is anticipated to be among the many prime picks chosen in Monday evening’s WNBA Draft.
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Steph Chambers/Getty Pictures
The Seattle Storm completed 25-15 final season but have the second choose within the draft, because of a four-team commerce. The league’s latest franchise, the Golden State Valkyries, can have the No. 5 choose. And the Los Angeles Sparks will look to bounce again with a No. 9 choose after the workforce completed final season a league-worst 8-32 after shedding Brink to an ACL tear in June.
Sixteen gamers had been invited to Monday’s draft, together with Bueckers, Iriafen, Morrow, Citron and the French star Dominique Malonga. The draft will air at 7:30 p.m. Jap time on ESPN.
