Should the Dallas Wings opt to select Paige Bueckers with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft, basketball legend Sue Bird believes that Dallas would immediately become a championship contender.

Earlier this month, the Wings sent shockwaves across the WNBA after securing the first overall pick in the league’s Draft lottery, despite the Los Angeles Sparks boasting better odds to obtain the selection. Discussing the outcome on a recent episode of the ‘A Touch More’ podcast, however, Bird asserted that Dallas is deserving of the highly-coveted selection.

“Not that surprising that Dallas got it,” she said. “I feel like between the Sparks and the Wings, you can make arguments, from a pure basketball standpoint, that there was really no wrong place for this number one pick to go.

“It probably will be Paige. I do want to say Paige does have a year of eligibility… but if we live in a world where Paige enters the draft this year, from a basketball roster standpoint, both places are kind of set up for success.”

Though the Wings finished the 2023-24 campaign with a meager 9-31 record, Bird insisted that their roster is still rife with talent. Over 38 games last season, star guard Arike Ogunbowale averaged 22.2 points, 5.1 assists and 4.6 rebounds. Forward Satou Sabally, meanwhile, is an unrestricted free agent but is expected to be retained by Dallas, where she’s spent her entire WNBA career.

“You’re with some vets [on the Wings],” Bird said. “Arike [Ogunbowale] is on this team. I mean, talk about a backcourt. And then of course Satou Sabally… who is a free agent. But if Dallas were able to keep Satou there, I mean, right away that team becomes pretty legit.

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Sue Bird previously commended Paige Bueckers for shifting the attention surrounding the WNBA

Sue Bird previously commended Paige Bueckers for shifting the attention surrounding the WNBA ( 

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“If Dallas does have Paige because of the No. 1 pick, Arike, who is already there, and they re-sign Satou, that big three will be up there with all the other big threes.”

This isn’t the first time that Bird has heaped praise on Bueckers, who’s already making headlines despite having yet to play a single game at the professional level. Long before the 23-year-old even suited up for UConn, she was garnering attention at Hopkins High School – prompting the former Seattle Storm guard to look into her.

“I’m starting to see on social media, this kid’s got buzz,” Bird recalled. “People are following her… when I saw that, I was like, ‘Oh, we’re good to go.’

“If you bring it back around to seeing Paige Bueckers getting that attention in high school, I was like ‘Oh, something is changing.’ For me, what that said was society is changing. Younger people are into… girl’s basketball… And that all speaks to the cultural cache that I feel like pro sports usually have with women’s basketball for some reason.

“We were the butt of the joke on SNL skits. We weren’t cool just yet. And Paige to me marked this moment of coolness.”