With four games left in the WNBA regular season, a lot is on the line for the eight teams in the playoff picture. If the season ended today, the Dallas Wings would be the eighth and final team in the postseason picture. That’s a big improvement from last season, but it would also mean a first-round date with a Minnesota Lynx superteam. For their first playoff run in the Paige Bueckers era, they’d hope to have an easier path to the championship. A home win against these Los Angeles Sparks would go a long way towards bolstering their postseason outlook.
The Wings enter as 7.5-point home favorites with -290 moneyline odds on DraftKings Sportsbook. The Sparks are +235 underdogs, with the game total set at 175.5 points.
Let’s dive into a preview, prediction, and pick for this Sparks-Wings matchup.
Sparks vs. Wings Preview
This will be the third and final regular season meeting between these two teams. So far, so good for the Wings: they won 104-96 on the road back in June, then 90-82 at home in July.
The stars truly showed out for Dallas in that first matchup. Arike Ogunbowale poured in 18 points, Paige Bueckers had 18 points and 14 assists, and Jessica Shepard put up 22 points with 15 rebounds. It’s no surprise to see their three most talented offensive players go to work on this subpar Sparks defense. The story was no different in the second matchup; Bueckers and Ogunbowale combined for 45 points, and Shepard recorded another double-double.
Objectives one, two, and three for the Sparks will be getting a handle on Dallas’ star trio. Ariel Atkins will have to do serious work at the point of attack, forcing the ball out of Paige’s hands and getting Arike to take tough shots. That’s much easier said than done. Perhaps head coach Lynne Roberts will tap some extra minutes for the newest Spark, Monique Akoa Makani, who could be a defensive asset. Matching some of Cam Brink’s minutes with Shepard could help to negate Dallas’ best playmaker on the roll. It’s also extremely important for Dearica Hamby to get busy on the glass while exploiting Shepard’s defensive weaknesses.
Dallas will find themselves pressing the Awak Kuier button once again for this matchup. Shepard may be elite on the boards, but needs a lot of coverage defensively. Kuier, one of the best rotational defenders in the WNBA, will be counted on heavily to deal with Hamby and Nneka Ogwumike inside the arc. In what promises to be a high-scoring affair, any stops will feel momentous, and no player on this Wings roster is better at creating stops than Kuier.
It’s all down to the star scoring trios. If Ogwumike, Hamby, and Rae Burrell can knock down their shots and put Dallas’ defense on the back foot, they have to like their chances. The Bueckers/Shepard/Ogwumike triumvirate rarely loses when all three of them get it going offensively. Bonus points for these stars if they can pitch in defensively to stop one another.
Sparks vs. Wings Pick, Best Bet
One thing is for sure: this Los Angeles Sparks team has struggled on the defensive end of the floor this season. It wasn’t a surprise to see them struggle against this talented Wings attack, and that’s not going to change in this matchup. But I do have faith in their offense keeping up; Nneka Ogwumike only has so many more buckets in her before retiring at the end of the season, and will have something special to show us. I’m counting on a lot of points here to keep this matchup exciting.
