The Wings will have to fly without a passenger. Already off to a sluggish start in the infancy of the WNBA season, the Dallas Wings are going to be without arguably their best player.
The team on Friday announced that Paige Bueckers, the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s draft out of UConn in April, was put in concussion protocol.
The move came after the Wings’ 97-92 loss to Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky on Thursday night. It was the Sky’s first victory of the season.
The new development will sideline her for at least two games.
The team did not give any specific details on what led to the sudden move, and it is unclear at this time what prompted Bueckers to go into protocol. She had a solid performance, with 15 points, eight assists and five rebounds in Thursday’s game.
Bueckers will not play in Dallas’ home game on Saturday against the Sky or on the road in Seattle against the Storm on Tuesday night. She will be re-evaluated after that.
The Wings have dropped five of their first six games to kick off the season. Bueckers has averaged 14.7 points, a team-high 6.7 assists and 2.0 steals a game in her professional debut while playing 33.9 minutes per game, also the most on the team. She ranks second in points and third in rebounds, as well.
Everyone in the basketball community knew Bueckers was going to be the top pick of this year’s draft for at the last two to three years, amid a record-setting career at UConn, even as a torn ACL cost her the 2022-23 campaign.
Embed from Getty ImagesShe averaged 19.8 points per game for the Huskies, the most in school history. Bueckers also had the third-most career points in women’s March Madness history. She ended her decorated run at UConn with a title back in April against South Carolina, having made the Final Four in each season.
It had been nine long years since Geno Auriemma and UConn’s previous title, their longest such drought since winning their first back in 1995, with Rebecca Lobo leading the charge.
