Last season, first overall pick Caitlin Clark helped lead the Indiana Fever to the playoffs in her first WNBA season. Perhaps the only stain on 2025 first overall pick Paige Bueckers’ tremendous rookie season is that her Dallas Wings were eliminated after Wednesday’s defeat to the Los Angeles Sparks.
For the Wings, the focus will turn squarely to the development of Bueckers and the core around her. Dallas will get its next chance to see its prized rookie in action tonight, when the Wings take on the Seattle Storm at 7:30 p.m. ET.
The Storm are eight-point favorites on DraftKings Sportsbook (-360 Moneyline), with the total set at 169 points. Dallas is +285 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down the clash and offer a prediction.
Storm at Wings prediction, pick
Wednesday night against the Sparks, Bueckers couldn’t be stopped. When the dust settled, she had tied the WNBA rookie scoring record with 44 points, becoming the first player this season to reach the 40-point plateau. It was the most efficient 40-ball in league history, as she made 17 of her 21 field-goal attempts, all four of her triples, and all six of her free throws. But it was Los Angeles point guard Kelsey Plum who had the last laugh, culminating her own 20-point performance with a banked runner in the lane after driving past Wings center Luisa Geiselsoder and securing an unlikely victory for the Sparks.
It’s highly unlikely that Bueckers goes for 40-plus again tonight, given the rarity of the task and given that Seattle ranks fourth in defensive rating. The Storm are stocked with defensive stoppers: Gabby Williams, Nneka Ogwumike, and Ezi Magbegor have all accumulated more than two defensive win shares this season and second overall pick Dominique Malonga has posted the 10th-highest block percentage since the All-Star break among players to play at least 10 games and average 10 minutes per game across that span. Magbegor ranks sixth in that same category. The Storm have allowed the fourth-fewest makes per game from the midrange, Bueckers’ preferred domain.
For Seattle, the three-point shooting will be the key. Since its last major trade — sending DiJonai Carrington to the Minnesota Lynx — Dallas has been league-average defensively from every spot on the court except on above-the-break threes, where opponents have shot a sizzling 43.6%. That hasn’t been a strength for the Storm this season, as they’ve shot just 32.0% on such shots. Of the four Seattle players to have attempted more than 100 three-pointers this season, only Skylar Diggins has converted at greater than a 35% clip. Diggins has been hot as of late, with two 20-point games in her last three outings, but the Storm as a whole are cold, going just 4-9 since the All-Star break with a plus-0.1 net rating and a 31.4% mark from deep.
That malaise hasn’t been Ogwumike’s fault. The President has averaged 20.7 points and 6.5 boards per game across that span on 54-36-78 shooting splits, but Seattle has lost close game after close game after posting the league’s third-worst true shooting percentage in the clutch since the All-Star break. Trade deadline acquistion Brittney Sykes has led the team in clutch usage and efficiency over that span, and Ogwumike has been effective as well, but Diggins has recorded just a 33.7% effective field goal percentage in clutch situations. That’s happened a lot for the Storm lately, as seven of their last nine games have been decided by five or fewer points. This one will be too.
