‘Taking Ownership Of Who I Want To Be’: How Dallas Wings Star Paige Bueckers Prepared For Dominant Second Season

INDIANAPOLIS — Paige Bueckers is no longer the Dallas Wings‘ future. She is the Wings’ present, the on-court extension of head coach Jose Fernandez‘s offensive system, and the player around whom general manager Curt Miller has rebuilt the rest of the roster. Year 2 starts Saturday against the Indiana Fever at Gainbridge Fieldhouse with a level of structural responsibility most second-year players never see.

The framing for what comes next is one Bueckers laid out herself on the first day of training camp.

“As a rookie, I wanted to gain respect, gel with the team, and not step on toes,” Bueckers said. “Now it’s about taking ownership of who I want to be and what we want this team to be. Coach Jose has emphasized how we want to perform, how we show up, taking every possession and practice seriously, and growing together. Being able to set that tone and be confident in it, I’ve grown a lot in that.”

Three weeks of practices, two preseason wins, and a series of off-floor decisions later, ownership has shaped almost every layer of the roster that Saturday’s tip-off lands on.

Bueckers averaged 19.2 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 5.4 assists in 36 games as a rookie in 2025, won Rookie of the Year, made the All-Star team, earned All-WNBA Second Team honors, and posted the highest efficiency rating among any guard in the WNBA at 20.3. She shot 47.7% from the field, 33.1% from 3-point range on 3.3 attempts per game, and 88.8% from the free-throw line. She set a Wings single-game scoring record with 44 points. She put together a 30-game streak of double-digit scoring. She finished among the league’s top nine in scoring, assists, and steals.

A 10-34 finish, an injury-shortened Arike Ogunbowale season, a frontcourt that lacked spacing, and a coaching staff that did not survive the offseason all defined Year 1 in ways Bueckers’ production could not overcome on her own. The roster Miller and Fernandez assembled this offseason was designed to address each of those structural problems individually, and the cumulative impact falls on Bueckers’ shoulders Saturday in a different way than it did a year ago.

She is not being asked to carry a roster. She is being asked to lead one.

Building the Body, Building the Year 2 Plan

Bueckers arrived for Day 1 of training camp with visibly more muscle than she carried into Year 1, the product of an offseason engineered around the demands of a full WNBA season. The college-to-pro transition had compressed her last summer. UConn’s run ended at the Final Four in early April last year, the Wings opened training camp weeks later, and Bueckers had no real off-cycle to retrain her body for the league she was about to enter. The 2026 offseason was the first full reset window of her professional career, and the work she did in it was visible the moment she walked back into College Park Center.

Fernandez had two and a half weeks with Bueckers at USA Basketball in March before either of them set foot in Arlington for camp, enough time to read her habits and the offseason work she had been quietly stacking. He flagged the strength gain in training camp, framing it in terms of the late-game scenarios that Dallas will be leaning on her to guide the team.

“I think it’s going to be great, especially late in games, in the fourth quarter. It’ll help her play through contact and finish at the rim through contact,” Fernandez told Dallas Hoops Journal. “There’s a reason she looks the way she does. She’s a pro. The way she invests, connects with everyone, and the offseason she’s had, it shows. She’s one of the best players in the world.”

Bueckers had been building toward that physical baseline since January. She joined Breeze in Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 league based in Miami, where the full-court format demanded both isolation skill and physical durability across two months of January-and-February basketball. By midway through the season, she was already feeling the strength work paying off in real time.

“For me, getting in the weight room this offseason and having a healthy offseason where I could grind and get better, I think it definitely helps with this Unrivaled league and just how physical it is,” Bueckers said during the Unrivaled season.

The added strength and conditioning is instrumental to the way Bueckers wants to play in Year 2 — more rim pressure, more transition opportunities, and more physical finishes. After the first practice of camp, Bueckers additionally laid out the priority list herself, including taking more 3-pointers.

“I want to get up more threes, get to the paint more, live at the rim more, and get to the free-throw line more,” Bueckers told Dallas Hoops Journal on Day 1. “Just getting out in transition and making plays.”

A week of work within Fernandez’s system further sharpened the list. By Media Day on April 27, with two practices left before the preseason opener, Bueckers had narrowed her on-court priorities to two technical pieces, including finishing with her left hand and off-the-dribble 3-point shooting. She also continued to emphasis vocal leadership as an emphasis.

“Finishing with my left hand is still a work in progress,” Bueckers said. “Also working on off-the-dribble three-point shooting, being able to come off a screen and rise into a shot. And beyond skill work, becoming more vocal and confident as a leader.”

The 3-point volume is not just her own goal. It is what Fernandez has asked of her since their first conversation as coach and player. Bueckers shot 33.1% from beyond the arc on 3.3 attempts per game as a rookie, a percentage that did not match the ceiling of her shot or the volume Fernandez wants from his guards inside the offensive structure he has been installing in Arlington.

“Continue to be great in leadership. I like the way she creates for others,” Fernandez said on Day 1. “We know about her mid-range, but she’s going to have to stretch the floor more, take more transition threes and half-court threes. That’s something we’ve talked about.”

The two professional environments Bueckers spent her offseason in did more than build her body. They gave her something her rookie year could not. Unrivaled was the first. The 3-on-3 format strips a player of her isolation reads. Defenders cover more space. Switches happen often. There is nowhere for a guard without a counter to hide.

“Three-on-three basketball also teaches you how to move in isolation, in space, offensively and defensively,” Bueckers told Dallas Hoops Journal on Day 1. “I learned a lot about myself.”

She extended the framing after the Wings’ April 30 preseason win in Indianapolis, with the Unrivaled’s influence on the team’s offseason fresh in her mind. Multiple Wings players had spent the winter in the league: Bueckers herself, Maddy Siegrist, Aziaha James, Li Yueru, Alanna Smith, and Ogunbowale. The conditioning gains showed up across the roster, not just in her.

“Unrivaled was a great experience for all of us,” Bueckers said. “Playing 3-on-3 full court forces you to defend and create more. You learn from veterans and improve how you take care of your body.”

USA Basketball was the second leg. Bueckers made her competitive debut for the senior national team at the FIBA Women’s World Cup Qualifying Tournament in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in March, then returned to camp in Phoenix later that month. The qualifier was her first international action in a senior Team USA uniform since she was 18 years old, and it slotted her into a roster of Hall of Famers, Olympic gold medalists, and most of the WNBA’s All-Star backcourt. It also placed her on the same floor as Fernandez, who was on the Team USA staff. The two spent two and a half weeks working together before they ever ran a Wings practice. Conditioning, shot creation, and leadership voice all sharpened across that arc.

The pride in the work has been a roster-wide thread since camp opened, and Bueckers has consistently steered the conversation away from her own offseason and toward the group’s. After the April 30 win, she pulled the focus back to the parts of the work no one outside the building gets to see.

“As a group, we take pride in the little details. A lot of the work is behind the scenes, in the weight room and training room,” Bueckers said. “You can see it in Aziaha’s game and in Maddy’s rebounding. We take pride in that physicality. Even after the game, we had the whole team in the weight room putting in extra work. That’s our focus, we’ve been really disciplined with it.”

The veteran voices have been the clearest external barometer of the shift. Grace Berger, who joined the Wings as a midseason addition in 2025, framed the new group as a noticeable departure from the team she walked into a year earlier.

“A lot of players came back stronger and in better shape than last year,” Berger told Dallas Hoops Journal.

Leadership Voice and Habit

The vocal leadership Bueckers brought into camp is rooted in the same two professional environments she keeps tracing back to, and for the same reason. Both Unrivaled and USA Basketball forced her to find a leadership voice she had not yet needed to use as a rookie in Dallas. The 3-on-3 league put her on a younger team that needed her on-court organization. The national team put her in a room of veterans who would not have respected a young player who hung back. Neither setting allowed her to default to the “don’t step on toes” posture she had carried through her first WNBA training camp.

“In Unrivaled, I learned to use my voice and be confident in that. We were a younger team, so I had to step up in my leadership role,” Bueckers said. “With USA Basketball, it was the same, being in a room with so many greats, Hall of Famers, people I grew up watching, and still being confident and using my voice while they respected it, that meant a lot.”

The 3-on-3 format also sharpened her instincts as a real-time organizer. The full-court game does not allow for the natural reset of timeouts and dead balls that a five-on-five game has. Possessions roll into possessions. The lead playmaker has to read coverages, adjust spacing, and direct teammates as the action unfolds. Bueckers said the league pushed her into that role for the first time in her career.

“I think it was using my voice and dissecting the game while it’s happening, being a coach on the floor,” Bueckers said. “I’ve always taken pride in that, but I feel like I really found my voice during Unrivaled.”

Fernandez’s offense in Dallas asks for a similar layer of in-possession communication. The Wings have been installing a full offensive and defensive system across camp, with the staff treating communication as a connective tissue across both ends of the floor. Bueckers said on Day 1 she planned to take that responsibility on directly, both for new arrivals working through new terminology and for returning teammates adjusting to the system.

“Being over-communicative. Even for returning players, everything is new, offense, terminology, defensive concepts. Communication is how you fix mistakes,” Bueckers said. “You’re not going to be perfect. Everyone is going to make mistakes. It’s about how you respond and how you communicate through it.”

The vocal leadership is paired with habit-driven leadership. Bueckers is regularly the last player off the floor at College Park Center, working through extra reps until she is satisfied with the work. During 5-on-5 segments when she is not on the floor, she communicates from the sideline, organizing teammates, walking through reads with Azzi Fudd, and resetting coverages between possessions. The level of engagement from a player who is not in the middle of a live possession is the kind of habit that usually belongs to veterans entering their seventh or eighth pro season. The other piece of the leadership profile, she said on Day 6, is the part that does not produce points on a stat sheet.

“As a leader and returner, it’s the little things, boxing out, talking, getting in passing lanes, running the floor, being selfless,” Bueckers said. “Those set the tone for everything else.”

The standard she holds her teammates to is the same one she has held herself to throughout camp. On Day 6, Bueckers traced the standard back to a personal benchmark she has carried since her UConn days, the same line she walks before holding anyone else accountable to it.

“I’ve always looked in the mirror first and never ask something of somebody else that I don’t do myself,” Bueckers said. “I hold myself to the highest standard, and I’m my toughest critic. That’s how we want to be as a team, holding each other accountable. If I tell someone to box out, I expect them to get on me if I don’t do it. Having that mutual respect and those relationships where you can have tough conversations is crucial.”

What Her Coaches and Teammates See

The two and a half weeks Fernendez spent with Buckers on the international circuit served as a preview of how she carries herself daily, and that preview is the lens he uses to talk about her now. He pointed back to it directly when explaining why he wants the Wings’ younger players to watch her every move.

“You also see it in Paige,” Fernandez said. “Taking care of her body, getting extra work in, being early, staying late. That’s the standard. I was fortunate to spend about two and a half weeks with USA Basketball, and she just does the right things. She leads, she connects, and she wants to be coached. She wants to take ownership. She’s a pleasure to coach, and that’s why she is who she is.”

The familiarity from the Team USA cycle has carried over directly into how camp has unfolded. Most first-year coaching assignments require a feeling-out period as a staff learns how its star player operates day to day. The Bueckers-Fernandez relationship had already covered that ground before either of them stepped onto a Wings practice floor.

“I’ve coached against both and worked with Paige in USA Basketball, so there was already familiarity,” Fernandez said at Media Day. “There haven’t been surprises. I knew how they would approach things daily, how they work, and how they carry themselves from the moment they arrive to when they leave the facility.”

The way Fernandez has framed his job with Bueckers is built on directness. He does not subscribe to the idea that elite players need their feedback softened, and Bueckers has cited his clarity multiple times throughout camp as a reason she has been able to lead with confidence in Year 2 rather than hesitation.

“Great players want to be told the truth,” Fernandez said on Day 1. “My job is to put her in the best situations possible, for her to be successful in the open floor, in the half court with the ball, and playing off the ball.”

Positional flexibility is one of the cornerstones of Fernandez’s plan for using her. The Wings have multiple ball-handlers behind Bueckers, with Odyssey Sims and JJ Quinerly being the guards mentioned that lasted through roster cuts, and Fernandez wants the depth to give Bueckers possessions where she can work as an off-ball scorer rather than as the primary creator. Dallas has the option to run offense through Smith and Jessica Shepard in the frontcourt, along with guards like Ogunbowale and Fudd to give different looks.

“Right now, you’ve got Paige at the point guard spot, but I plan on playing her a lot on the wing,” Fernandez said early in training camp. “Then you’ve got Lindsay Allen, Odyssey Sims, JJ, and Grace. That’s what camp is about, figuring that out along with roster construction.”

Miller’s framing during camp matched what he had told Dallas Hoops Journal in an exclusive interview the prior August, when Bueckers was 22 games into her rookie year. The Wings were 3-19 at the time, on their way to the 10-34 finish, but Miller had already begun mapping out the offseason. He believed Bueckers would have a recruiting role in attracting the kind of veteran free agents Dallas had not been able to land before her arrival.

“Paige will be a unifier, someone players want to play with,” Miller told Dallas Hoops Journal in August. “Our young core will make us attractive, too. Players will see these young, great teammates and think, ‘That’s our second unit, I want to be a part of that.'”

The line Miller had called eight months before camp showed up in the building as soon as camp opened. By mid-April, with Sims, Smith, Shepard, and Alysha Clark all locked in as offseason additions, Miller pointed back to the player whose recruiting voice he had bet on. The veterans were not the only signal. Bueckers had been one of the engines of those conversations.

“I love the competition and enthusiasm,” Miller said in April. “Players are buying into Jose’s system. You can see leadership, Paige’s leadership stands out, and the addition of veterans like Alysha Clark and Odyssey Sims has already made an impact.”

Miller placed the UConn-driven chemistry within the same roster-building philosophy at Media Day. The Wings’ offseason free agency class was layered with players who had won at every level of the sport. Miller views a championship pedigree as a roster input regardless of where it was earned. The UConn pipeline carries a particular kind of weight inside that framework.

“Whether it’s college championships, Final Fours, or WNBA titles, bringing that pedigree into the locker room matters,” Miller said. “Players like Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd already have chemistry and know how to play together. UConn players, in general, know how to play the right way and understand culture and effort, things you don’t have to coach.”

Clark, the three-time WNBA champion and two-time All-Defensive Team selection who signed with Dallas in free agency, said during her Day 2 media availability that Bueckers played an active role in recruiting her. The Clark signing carried more weight than its salary tier suggested considering the 38-year-old veteran who has spent the back half of her career attaching to contenders.

“The vision Jose has and his reputation as a coach,” Clark said of her decision to sign with Dallas. “I’ve also known Curt for a long time. He’s always been supportive of me. Then there’s the young core they’re building. Paige was very vocal with me in the offseason. You can feel that they’re trying to change the reputation of the organization.”

A second-year player actively recruiting a 15-year veteran is not standard. It is the clearest off-floor evidence of the ownership Bueckers described.

The on-court chemistry built with Smith, the 2025 Co-Defensive Player of the Year and the centerpiece of Dallas’s frontcourt, has accelerated the system install. Smith spent the back half of her time in Minnesota learning how to operate in the spaces a primary mid-range scorer wants to occupy. The familiarity with that role has carried directly into her work with Bueckers in pick-and-roll actions across camp.

“Screening is kind of universal, especially with guards who can shoot,” Smith said at Media Day. “What’s unique about Paige, similar to Courtney Williams, is her mid-range game. It’s not just about setting the screen, but how you separate afterward because they like to operate in that space. I’ve had a lot of practice with Courtney on that, so I feel confident helping Paige with it.”

James, the second-year guard who has been one of the camp’s clearest risers, has spent her first month under Fernandez closely tracking the way Bueckers has set the defensive standard. She arrived back from her own offseason in Unrivaled noticeably stronger, with a stated focus on point-of-attack defense, and has consistently echoed the same scoring-versus-defense framing Bueckers has been pressing on the locker room since Day 1.

“Yeah, I feel like we have a lot of scorers on our team, a lot of talent, but I feel like defense wins games,” James said at Media Day. “That’s definitely going to stand out here for sure.”

Paige Bueckers’ Perspective on the Team

Bueckers has been consistent throughout camp and preseason about the identity she wants the Wings to play with, and she captured the message most fully pregame in Indianapolis on April 30. The Wings had landed the night before for their first preseason game, the first competitive look anyone outside the building had at the system Fernandez had been installing in Arlington for two weeks. Bueckers did not lead with a play call or a defensive scheme. She framed it in terms of the team’s intangibles.

“Just our intensity, our compete level, our energy and effort, everything we can control,” Bueckers told Dallas Hoops Journal. “The passion and connectivity we play with are big. We want to establish our identity on both ends of the floor, getting out in transition, pushing the pace, playing with movement and space, and attacking. Defensively, we want to be aggressive, physical, and disruptive, rebound, get out, and limit teams to one shot.”

Her own contribution at Media Day came in the same process-driven register. The Wings have spoken openly during camp about wanting to compete for a playoff spot in 2026. Bueckers steered clear of that framing and kept the focus on the day-to-day work, which is where she has kept it through every camp and preseason availability.

“My focus is on being the best teammate and leader I can be, being consistent in effort, energy, discipline, and communication,” Bueckers said. “You think about playoffs and championships, but you can’t get there without winning each day. It’s about maximizing every day, on the court, in the weight room, and in recovery.”

The veterans Miller added this offseason are voices Bueckers has leaned on as much as she has led. Clark and Sims arrived with championship resumes and decades of professional experience between them. Bueckers’ approach has been to absorb what they bring rather than assert seniority over them. That posture is part of what made the Clark recruitment land in the first place.

“They’ve been really impactful,” Bueckers said to Dallas Hoops Journal of the team’s veterans during camp. “They have respect across the league and championship DNA. They’ve seen everything. We trust them and listen to them because they understand the league inside and out. Being able to lean on those voices has been great.”

Bueckers also outlined her own role in helping the rookies through their first WNBA action. Fudd was making her professional debut on April 30. Several training camp invitees were taking their first preseason reps that night as well. Bueckers used the pregame to lay out exactly how she planned to support the group in that moment.

“Just instilling confidence. Reminding them that this is what they’ve been doing their whole lives, you’re living out your dream,” Bueckers told Dallas Hoops Journal. “Don’t overthink it. Be yourself, be aggressive, and trust what got you here. Just go out and play your game.”

Her five-point self-assessment of the team during Thursday’s media availability doubled as the Wings’ checklist heading into the opener. The list was specific, sequential, and pulled directly from what the staff had been emphasizing across two preseason games. It also tracked closely with the messaging she has been pressing on the locker room since the first day of camp.

“How we need to take care of the ball better, we need to clean it up defensively,” Bueckers said. “We wanted to set the tone with our physicality, and I feel like we did that. Continue to stay connected, continue to up our communication level on both sides of the floor, get out and play in transition, limit teams to one shot, box out better.”

The pace at which the team has absorbed Fernandez’s system has surprised her. Bueckers and Fudd had played together at UConn and with Team USA, but the rest of the rotation had not shared a floor before April. Several frontcourt additions arrived from overseas commitments in the second week of camp. She had braced herself for a longer chemistry build than the one that had played out across the first three weeks.

“We kind of expected that it was gonna take a couple games and more practice reps to really get to know each other, know each other’s tendencies, and grow in our chemistry,” Bueckers said Wednesday. “But I think it’s happening fast, and we wanna play extremely fast, but we also wanna play under control and limit our live ball turnovers.”

The accountability standard Fernandez has brought to the building has factored directly into how Bueckers leads. The new staff has graded film and demanded callouts on coverages from the first session of camp, with Fernandez emphasizing that what a coaching staff allows is what it encourages. Bueckers has cited the structure as a clarifying force, not a complicating one.

“It gives you confidence. Everyone knows their role and what it’s going to take. If someone steps outside the culture, he holds us accountable,” Bueckers said on Day 1. “It helps you hold yourself accountable, too. That clarity builds confidence across the team.”

A System Built Around Her Decision-Making

Fernandez’s offense runs through Bueckers. Miller has described the system as European-influenced, built on constant movement, off-ball cutting, and minimal stagnation. Bueckers has called it a system where there is “never a stagnant moment.” It’s to be expected in a system inspired by assistant coach Mike Neighbors’ Flow offense, featuring plenty of handoffs, Flare screens, and weak-side activity to generate player movement and keep the defense having to make decisions.

The Wings have spent every practice translating that vocabulary into on-court habits, with Fernandez running variations of his core actions across both projected starting groups and his second units. With the team having various key late arrivals to training camp, the integration process has gone as smoothly as it possible can by keeping those players plugged in through supplying film and conversation with coaches.

The shot profile is built to support it. The Wings shot 36.4% from beyond the arc against Indiana on April 30, finished third in the WNBA in preseason 3-point percentage at 39.5%, and led the league in field-goal percentage at 50.4% and assists per game at 24.5.

The way Bueckers framed her own role inside the system on Day 1 was not a stat or a milestone. It was a job description.

“My number one goal is to be the best teammate I can be, make everyone around me better, and contribute to winning basketball for the Dallas Wings,” Bueckers said. “We all have that mentality of sacrificing and doing whatever the team needs.”

Two Chemistry Threads That Define the Roster

Two relationships shape how the offense functions on a possession-by-possession basis.

The first is Bueckers and Fudd, the UConn pairing that won the 2025 national championship together and saw Fudd earn the NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player honor. The two have shared multiple USA Basketball cycles together and started both preseason games as a unit. Pregame at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on April 30, before her first WNBA game alongside Fudd as a professional, Bueckers framed the chemistry as something the two had not needed to build. They had spent close to a decade learning each other’s reads.

“We’ve been playing together for a long time, through USA Basketball and college, so it’s organic chemistry,” Bueckers told Dallas Hoops Journal pregame at Gainbridge Fieldhouse before the preseason opener. “We picked up right where we left off. We understand each other’s tendencies and how to play off one another, and we’re focused on helping each other be at our best.”

What Fudd has shown to earn her starting reps from Day 1 of camp is what Bueckers walked through on Wednesday. Fudd’s preseason production climbed from four points in 16 minutes in her professional debut at Indianapolis to 12 points in 21 minutes in Austin three days later. Bueckers framed the trajectory as a function of confidence and aggressiveness rather than skill development. The skill was already there. The willingness to use it without hesitation has been the Year 2 step.

“She’s gotten to all her spots. She’s been aggressive, and she’s shooting the ball without hesitation, so that’s what we ask of her,” Bueckers said. “She got drafted and she’s on this team to shoot and score the ball. She’s learning the physicality of the WNBA and learning how to play defensively. There’s a lot of different schemes and terminology, so to continue to stay in communication and get more reps, she’s only gonna get better.”

The second thread is Bueckers and Ogunbowale. The franchise’s all-time leading scorer was the last of the Wings’ late arrivals to rejoin camp after Sichuan’s WCBA Finals run in China, and Bueckers laid out the mutual investment between the two at Media Day on April 27, before Ogunbowale had even arrived in Arlington. The 2025 version of the Bueckers-Ogunbowale partnership lost the chance to built on post-All-Star break momentum by Ogunbowale’s injury-shortened season. However, the 2026 version, both have said, has significant potential to do damage.

“Growing up, I watched Arike. She’s one of the best scorers in the league,” Bueckers said. “For her to sacrifice and embrace me coming in as a scorer and playmaker meant a lot. We’ve talked a lot this offseason about just wanting to win. The best teams are selfless. For someone at her level to step into a leadership role and use her voice to instill confidence, that’s huge. I’m really excited about building on that.”

She extended the framing on Wednesday, several days into Ogunbowale’s return to practice. The franchise’s all-time leading scorer is entering her eighth professional season, and Bueckers has repeatedly said throughout camp that having Ogunbowale healthy from the start of the year is one of the structural changes that separate the 2026 team from its predecessor.

“It’s really fun to have her back, and to get her back into the flow of things offensively, defensively,” Bueckers said. “We talked about it in the offseason how much we just wanna win and how much we enjoy playing together. We enjoy each other as people as well. Just to have somebody on the floor who can score on every level, every level of the floor, every type of shot, is a huge addition to our offense.”

The Bueckers-Ogunbowale-Fudd configuration plays its first regular-season minutes together Saturday.

The Preseason Barometer and Year 2 Expectations

The clearest indicator of Bueckers’ command of the system has been the assist-to-turnover trajectory across the two preseason games. She finished with three turnovers in the opener and zero in the finale. Fernandez has cited the cleanup directly.

The Wings led the WNBA in preseason scoring at 98.0 points per game, tied with Indiana, and finished fourth in free-throw percentage at 80.4%. The April 30 win at Indianapolis featured Bueckers scoring 20 points before halftime on 8-of-12 shooting and 4-of-6 from 3-point range. The May 3 win in Austin saw her shift into the distributor role Fernandez wants her settling into for the season, finishing with 11 points, four rebounds, and nine assists with zero turnovers. The 3-point volume Fernandez asked her to add showed up early. The elite decision-making with the basketball she possesses shined later.

Year 2 differs from Year 1 in one important way. The Wings built a rotation that includes the WNBA’s 2025 Co-Defensive Player of the Year in Smith, the WNBA’s 2025 field-goal percentage leader in Shepard, the franchise’s all-time scorer in Ogunbowale, and the No. 1 overall pick of the 2026 draft in Fudd. The 2026 Wings ask Bueckers to be the engine, but they do not ask her to be the entire vehicle.

What that produces is a Year 2 environment in which the efficiency from her rookie season can be more easily sustained without requiring as significant of a burden. Regardless, Bueckers framed the personal version of that expectation in deliberately measured language at Media Day. The Wings have spent the offseason talking about playoff contention. Bueckers steered clear of that language entirely.

“I’m not big on setting expectations or ceilings,” Bueckers said. “It’s about staying even-keeled and focusing on being the best version of myself each day. Some of the best moments last year were off the court, building relationships, spending time together. I’m still living out my childhood dream, so it’s about enjoying that and growing every day.”

She enters Saturday eight points away from 700 for her career and six assists shy of 200.

The Wings open at 12 p.m. CT Saturday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on ABC. Tip-off is the first regular-season possession of the era Bueckers has been tone-setting for since Day 1 of camp.

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