The 2025 WNBA season is just around the corner. Last season, Caitlin Clark kept audiences glued to thier screen and their seats, helping the league set record levels of attendance and television viewership in her rookie campaign.
Now, there is a new rookie on the season. Paige Buckers, the former UCONN Huskies standout, went first overall in the draft to the Dallas Wings, and people at the top of the sport are dishing on what Dallas can expect from Bueckers, per ESPN.
“She understands the game. Her IQ is very high. She comes from a winning program, and all that stuff translates when you have multiple tools like she does,” one general manager said anonymously.
“She could be 1-for-9 from the field but have eight assists. Most people can’t flip the switch. When you have multiple skills like she does, it allows you to assimilate faster.
“She’s not Caitlin Clark, she’s built differently, but she can make people better, and she’s hypercompetitive and she can get to her spots at the same time. And she’s going to have even more weapons around her in our league, so her playmaking will be even more on display.”
“When you look at what she can do and how she does it and how efficient she is,” another general manager added, “that, to me, is what makes it where she could be one of the greats that play.”
“My only concern with Paige is physical,” someone else offered. “She’s pretty slight; she’s a little bit knock-kneed. There’s a level of physicality you have to get used to playing in the pros that I think could take its toll on her, and then just her physical ability to hold up over the years. You’ve seen the injuries at Connecticut.”
As long as Bueckers’s body can hold up, there’s no reason she and Clark can’t dominate at the top of the sport for the next decade plus.