ARLINGTON, TX — The Dallas Wings (0-2) dug deep in moments on Monday but couldn’t mount a comeback in a 79-71 loss to the Seattle Storm (1-1) at College Park Center.
The Wings are a full-fledged construction zone at this point, with a renovation-style teardown and rebuild in effect in 2025, so there are still positives to be taken from a loss like Monday’s. The team’s 3-point shooting and interior defense, however, are not among them.
Dallas shot just 4-of-19 from 3-point range in Monday’s loss and watched Seattle nail 9-of-11 of their attempts from beyond the arc in the first half. The Storm missed all four of their 3-point attempts in the second half but still shot 60% from deep for the game. Skylar Diggins and Gabby Williams each hit 3-of-4 from 3-point range, while Alysha Clark went 2-for-3 in the win.
The Wings’ defense couldn’t make heads or tails of the Storm’s pick-and-roll sets at times, which often led to easy buckets inside for Seattle. The Storm feasted inside at times as they built a lead as large as 15 at the half and held the Wings at arm’s length until time ran out. But they also held Seattle to just 10 points in the third quarter and just 13 points in the fourth to give themselves a chance at their first win of the year.
Paige watch
We at Mavs Moneyball, like so many who are ensconced in WNBA fandom, are going to be devoting a greater-than-zero amount of energy to Paige Bueckers Watch this year. It’s only natural. She’s been tabbed The Next Big Thing in the W this year, and she’s in our city.
Bueckers looked much looser in her second WNBA game than she did her first. She played a much freer-flowing brand of basketball, created more and was more of a playmaker. Of course, it helps that Bueckers wasn’t facing the rabid defensive pressure on Monday against Seattle that the team did on Friday against the Minnesota Lynx.
Bueckers nailed her first 3-pointer of the game in the first quarter, scored 11 points in the first half on Monday (compared to just 10 in four quarters on Friday) and was efficient in starting the fast break. She dished four assists before halftime, compared to just a pair in the entire game against the Lynx. She showed that signature ability to hit the toughest shots on the floor, even through fouls that went uncalled, even over double-teams.
Bueckers finished with a team-high 19 points on 7-of-14 shooting, eight assists and five rebounds.
Siegrist sighting
Seattle Storm v Dallas Wings Maddy Siegrist #20 of the Dallas Wings shoots a three point basket during the game against the Seattle Storm on May 19, 2025 at the College Park Center in Arlington, TX.
Photo by Michael Gonzales/NBAE via Getty Images
Before the season-opener, when asked what she thought the next step of her development looked like going into her third WNBA season, Wings forward Maddy Siegrist thought about the question for a second then said, “Shoot a ton of threes.”
She went 1-of-3 from deep in the loss to the Lynx, then missed her first against the Storm on Monday. But in the third quarter, she hit two in a row as part of a 13-2 Wings run. Siegrist played off Bueckers nicely on her second, which made it 64-59 with 1:21 left in the third. Bueckers and Siegrist made a similar play on a little dribble-exchange look with just over three minutes left to play in the game for a jumper to make it 74-65, but the comeback ultimately came up short.
“Maddy’s extremely easy to play with,” Bueckers said. “She’s very smart, and I felt like a lot of our two-man action worked really well. She can shoot from all three levels and so she’s always a threat on the floor.”
Pardon us while we form an exploratory committee to investigate just how many more 3-pointers Siegrist and Bueckers can put up per game in the theoretical sense, and how the Wings can approach that number, in a very real sense. Siegrist finished with 12 points off the bench on 2-of-4 shooting from 3-point range.
Keep the main thing the main thing
Both Wings head coach Chris Koclanes and guard DiJonai Carrington admitted in their pre-game comments that the team’s discipline and focus came and went a little too often in the Wings’ season-opening loss to the Lynx on Friday. Both said maintaining composure when things didn’t go the Wings’ way would be a big point of emphasis against Seattle.
“I thought our attention shifted to things outside of our control, the officiating,” Koclanes said pre-game, referring to the team’s loss to Minnesota. “Looking for more discipline in general across the board.”
Carrington said Koclanes pointed it out on film after the season opener.
“There [were] a lot of clips that he showed of us, whether it was us stopping to talk to the refs, or us stopping to be like, ‘Why didn’t we get the call?’ or stopping because we thought [Minnesota players] traveled,” Carrington said. “We have to play through that. We have to be better. We put ourselves at a disadvantage at the other end, 5-on-4.”
The Wings found it a little tougher to do those things once the game started, though. Midway through the first quarter, Arike Ogunbowale, one of this team’s unquestioned leaders and last year’s second-leading scorer in the WNBA, tried to drive past Storm forward Gabby Williams, who has about three inches in height on Ogunbowale. Williams swatted the driving attempt, then Ogunbowale got a little too feisty defensively in the backcourt, trying to make up for the play, and was called for a cheap reaching foul. The seventh-year pro got demonstrative with the officials after the call, which, predictably, led to a technical foul.
Ogunbowale had a tough game against Seattle, shooting just 2-of-14 from the field and 1-of-8 from 3-point territory in the loss. The Wings have got to find the ability to keep the main thing the main thing through the ebbs and flows of the game. This is not a team that can afford self-inflicted wounds as it searches for its identity on the court.
Dirk, Wemby in the stands
After Philadelphia 76ers star Tyrese Maxey slid into his courtside seat fashionably late for Friday’s 99-84 loss to the Lynx, the Wings continued to host some high-profile ballers in their second game of the season. Both San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama and Dallas Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki sat courtside for Wings vs. Storm.
Wembanyama was seated between the scorers’ table and the Wings’ bench. The Storm picked Dominique Malonga, another French baller, with the No. 2 overall selection in the 2025 WNBA Draft, right after the Wings chose Paige Bueckers with the first pick. Malonga, just 19 years old, goes 6’6” but played just 10 minutes in Seattle’s first game on Saturday and just one against the Wings on Monday. She scored a bucket late in the second on her only touch of the game.
Nowitzki sat on the other side of the court, near the broadcast table and received a loud ovation from the home crowd when introduced on the jumbotron in the game’s first quarter.