With a 9-24 record, the Dallas Wings aren’t competing for anything other than a top lottery pick. While there was a lot of initial excitement around the trio of Paige Bueckers, Arike Ogunbowale, and DiJonai Carrington, the Wings struggled to find their footing. They quickly emerged as one of the least competitive teams in the league.
Landing another lottery pick is by no means a bad outcome for the Wings, though. They just drafted Paige Bueckers. Adding another young star to the roster will only further improve the team’s future potential.
Even though the Wings aren’t competing for a playoff spot, they could impact which teams end up making the postseason. The playoff race is incredibly close this year. For some teams, just one loss could make the difference between securing a playoff spot and falling out of the postseason picture. Dallas is in a great position to hand out those losses. ESPN listed the Wings spoiling someone’s playoff ambitions as a hot take for the final stretch of the season. Given the Wings’ history of beating playoff teams, it doesn’t seem very far fetched.
The Wings have beaten good teams before
Dallas may have only won nine games, but some of those wins were massive, showcasing the team’s potential. Six of the Wings’ nine wins came against current playoff teams.
They beat the Golden State Valkyries, Atlanta Dream, Phoenix Mercury, Seattle Storm, New York Liberty, and Indiana Fever. The win over New York was perhaps the Wings’ best performance of the season. They scored over sixty points in the first half and withstood a Liberty comeback despite a terrible fourth quarter. Arike Ogunbowale and Paige Bueckers led the team with twenty points each. The former also dished out a career-high 14 assists.
The Wings have proven that they can beat playoff-level teams. If they continue to do that in the final stretch of the season, they could easily spoil a team’s playoff hopes.
Dallas still has several games left against playoff hopefuls
The only team that has truly separated itself from the rest of the league is Minnesota. However, the Dream, Liberty, and Mercury also seem locked into the top four in any order—even though the Mercury are only one game ahead of the Aces and could fall in the standings. In the bottom half of the playoff standings, the Aces, Fever, Valkyries, Storm, and Sparks are competing for only four spots.
The Aces look vastly improved compared to the beginning of the season, but still have to prove that they can maintain that level of play. Indiana just lost both of its point guards to season-ending injuries and lost a tough game to Dallas. The Valkyries are playing without their lone All-Star, Seattle is going through a rough patch with six consecutive losses, and the Sparks are still trying to get out of the hole they dug for themselves earlier in the season.
The Wings still have three games against the Sparks, two against Golden State, and one each against Las Vegas, Seattle, and Phoenix coming up. Those games could end up deciding the playoff standings.