ARLINGTON, Texas — Dallas Wings point guard Paige Bueckers will make her WNBA debut Friday night, only 40 days removed from leading the Connecticut Huskies to their first national championship in nine years.
And when Bueckers, the No. 1 overall pick in April’s draft, takes the court against the Minnesota Lynx, she will be fulfilling a lifelong dream.
“A dream, really,” Bueckers told NBC News about what it feels like to be at the precipice of her first professional game. “You get to that stage, and then you want to see what you do with it, like you’re living out your childhood dream. But then you want to continue to build and get better.”
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“You’re just trying to be grateful for it, like you worked so hard to get here, you had so many people invest in you to get here. So it was really a group effort, and it took a village,” she said.
Bueckers, 23, enters the WNBA after an eventful collegiate career.
Injuries shortened her 2021-22 season to only 17 games, and she missed the entirety of the following year due to a torn ACL.
But Bueckers bounced back, leading the Huskies to the Final Four in 2024 before a championship run in April. She ended her career at Connecticut as the school’s third all-time leading scorer.
When asked what Dallas fans can expect when she puts on her Wings jersey, Bueckers said “a passion and sense of pride.”
Bueckers will be trying to help build up a Dallas team that has not won a second-round playoff game since moving to Texas in 2016. In that time, the Wings have only made it out of the first round once, in 2023.
Bueckers, one of the biggest stars in the women’s game in her time at Connecticut, is joining the league at the same time as an increase in attention on the WNBA, which is coming off its most-watched Finals game in 25 years.
Bueckers is cognizant of the impact she and the current generation of stars can have on the visibility of the league.
“Continue to build on the foundation that was laid for us and all the people that came before us,” Bueckers said when asked what she hopes to contribute to the sport at large. “So we can dream and live in these shoes, I’m gonna try to build for the next generation.”
Priscilla Thompson reported from Arlington, and Rohan Nadkarni reported from Chicago.
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