When the WNBA season schedule was announced, fans immediately circled tonight’s game between the Indiana Fever and the Dallas Wings on their calendar. It was set to be the first pro matchup between the WNBA’s pre-eminent star, the Fever’s Caitlin Clark, and the up-and-comer, the Wings’ Paige Bueckers.
With so much hype for the game, the team moved the game to the American Airlines Center, and floor seats cost over $1,000. But after sitting out last night’s loss to the Los Angeles Sparks with a groin injury, Clark is set to miss her second straight game.
Indiana is a 1.5-point favorite on DraftKings Sportsbook (-125 Moneyline), with the total set at 166.5 points. Below, I’ll break down the matchup and offer my prediction.
Fever at Wings prediction, pick
During Clark’s initial five-game absence earlier in the season, the Fever went a solid 2-3, but last night’s performance was extremely uninspiring. Indiana shot just 36.5% from the field and 25.0% from beyond the arc while allowing the Sparks to make half of their shots. Azura Stevens’ 23 points tied for her second-highest total of the season. There were some positives; the Fever out-rebounded Los Angeles and won the turnover battle by six, but at the end, it wasn’t enough to overcome the absence of Clark’s gravity. As a team, Indiana’s effective field goal percentage is 4.9 percentage points better with Clark on the court than with her off of it, even though she’s made fewer than 30% of her triples this season.
The pathway to winning without Clark involves defense. Although she has made tremendous strides on that side of the ball between her rookie and sophomore seasons, seeing her defensive rating improve by nearly 10 points per 100 possessions, the Fever have still been 3.6 points per 100 possessions better with their star off the floor than they have with her on it. While opponents have shot less efficiently with Clark on the bench, they turned the ball over at a significantly higher rate. Sydney Colson has been the biggest beneficiary of her absence, and this season, opponents have been 7.6 points per 100 possessions worse with the 35-year-old on the floor.
Indiana shouldn’t take Dallas lightly; despite just a 4-12 record and a negative-4.2 net rating, the Wings are starting to find their form. They’ve won three of their last four games and they only narrowly lost to the Washington Mystics in overtime. Across that span, Bueckers has averaged 18.3 points, five rebounds, and five assists per game, and while she hasn’t shot the ball very efficiently, she’s also averaged 2.6 steals + blocks and hasn’t turned the ball over very much. Arike Ogunbowale, a four-time All-Star and 2019 fifth overall pick, has had three 25-plus-point games in her last seven, and Chinese center Li Yueru, acquired on June 14 from the Seattle Storm, has been dominant on the glass.
The sample sizes are too small for me to definitively say that Dallas has figured out its defensive issues over the last four games, but to hold the Atlanta Dream — who have had the league’s second-best offense this season — to just 55 points is objectively impressive. DiJonai Carrington was an All-Defensive honoree in 2024 and NaLyssa Smith and Myisha Hines-Allen have both been above-average for most of their career. Plus, in a small sample size, opponents have shot just 48% within five feet of the basket with Li in the game. Without Clark, the Fever’s offense will be too stagnant to win.
