Paige Bueckers just played her first last game with UConn, and in less than two weeks, she'll learn which team will most likely select her with the No. 1 pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft.
Four teams (Mystics, Wings, Sparks, Sky) will vie for the No. 1 pick. However, Chicago owes Dallas a first-round pick swap as part of the Marina Mabrey trade. Therefore, if the Sky win the lottery, the No. 1 overall pick will go to the Wings.
Which team should Bueckers be secretly rooting to go to?
Ranking the top WNBA landing spots for Paige Bueckers
3. Washington Mystics
Washington has the lowest odds to win the draft lottery at 10.4%. The Mystics are in a transition period after parting ways with head coach Eric Thibault and GM Mike Thibault. The organization hit the reset button and would love nothing more than to bring Bueckers to D.C.
Washington also holds the No. 6 pick in the 2025 draft, the same selection the front office used last year to pick Aaliyah Edwards. Bueckers would be thrilled to reunite with her former Connecticut teammate.
The Mystics want to regain their championship form, and drafting Bueckers would give Washington a clear vision for the future. However, there's not only a question mark about which direction they'll take when hiring a new GM and head coach but also uncertainty about how the new leadership will retool the current roster.
2. Dallas Wings
Thanks to the Sky, the Wings have the highest chance of selecting Bueckers at 45.4%. Like many other teams, Dallas fired its head coach Latricia Trammell. The Wings announced on Friday that they hired former Sparks head coach Curt Miller as their new GM and executive vice president of operations. Miller's first order of business will be finding a new head coach.
Injuries piled up for the Wings last season, ultimately leading to Dallas missing the playoffs and finishing with the second-worst record in the league (9-31). Shortly after the Wings' season ended, Natasha Howard announced that she won't re-sign with the organization in free agency.
Satou Sabally will also be a free agent. She posted a TikTok and talked about how she's "super excited" to be a free agent. She liked comments from Fever fans pushing for her to go to Indiana. A Wings fan commented and pleaded for Sabally to remain in Dallas, to which she said, "Dallas will always be my first real American hometown." It sounds like she's ready for a change of scenery.
Many unknowns are floating around the organization, but hiring Miller was a great move. Losing Howard (and maybe Sabally) wouldn't sting as much for Wings fans if they knew Bueckers would soon be on her way to Texas to play alongside star Arike Ogunbowale. That duo would be a lot of fun to watch, but there's another landing spot that makes more sense for Bueckers.
1. Los Angeles Sparks
The Sparks have the second-best odds to land Bueckers at 44.2%, narrowly trailing the Wings. It's the fourth season in a row that Los Angeles will select in the lottery.
The main downside about LA is that the organization shockingly fired Miller and is searching for a new coach to continue its rebuild. Bueckers would've fit perfectly in Miller's system, which makes the Wings an intriguing destination. However, there's something LA has that Dallas doesn't.
A young core of Bueckers, Cameron Brink, and Rickea Jackson would rival the Fever as the best in the league. Bueckers would be the perfect lead guard. It's fitting that they'd play together in one of the largest media markets in the world. Stars shine the brightest in Hollywood.
Drafting Bueckers would be a game-changer for the Sparks, but their current priority is finding the best coach to lead LA in the right direction. Let's see how things shake out.