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“I don’t know,” she told Costabile and a scrum of reporters during a breakout session ahead of Connecticut’s Final Four match-up Friday night against UCLA. “The reports are the reports. People write stories, and it’s whatever. Honestly, I’m not really worried about that at the moment. I’m just worried about being here, being present with the team, and trying to get better every single day. So whatever the future may hold, it’s only in God’s hands.”
Speaking religiously, that may be true, but from a team and league-specific context, Bueckers will have a significant amount of say in her immediate professional future. So Costabile followed up by asking: is there somewhere specific Bueckers wants to be?
“Nowhere specific,” Bueckers said. “Wherever I end up.”
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Speaking to a half-dozen league sources on Thursday, that answer read in a variety of ways. Some took it as a clear indication that she intended to join Dallas should the Wings select her. Others contrasted the lack of specificity with her answer to Rebecca Lobo about whether she intended to enter the 2025 Draft or return to school, something she’s now spoken about on several occasions — a fact she herself raised.
But ultimately, the fundamentals of this decision have not changed, though the timeline for it has grown considerably shorter.
As I have previously reported, the Dallas Wings have not heard from Bueckers or her representatives about her 2025 WNBA Draft plans. As of April 3, that has not changed, multiple league sources told The Next, and a league source tells The Next that Bueckers’ agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, is not entertaining questions from reporters or teams on Bueckers until after the Final Four has concluded.
It is important to note that this doesn’t in any way preclude the Wings from selecting Bueckers — even if she chose to communicate to Dallas that she did not intend to sign there, the Wings could simply call her bluff and draft her anyway.
For many WNBA front office evaluators and others around the league, that has increasingly become the conventional wisdom for how this will go. But this is anything but a conventional draft, for a multitude of reasons. The Wings, Washington Mystics and Connecticut Sun control 7 of the 12 first round picks — three teams viewed as rebuilding by much of the rest of the league, though Connecticut and to a certain extent Dallas would push back on that notion.
The league is also operating in its final season with the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA), with salaries considerably lower for rookies than it is expected they will be in the new CBA, once signed. It is not an accident that Olivia Miles and Flau’jae Johnson, for instance, chose to remain in school rather than enter the 2025 draft — in Miles’ case, choosing the transfer portal.
But while Bueckers can always change her mind, there is no reason to think she has any appetite for staying in school. Which means that, once the national championship game concludes on the evening of April 6, Bueckers, the Wings and any potential other suitors have a compressed timeline of just over eight days to figure everything out.
Multiple league sources told The Next that the only package they believe could allow Dallas to deal Bueckers and save face, should she tell the Wings she is not willing to play there, is from the Washington Mystics, who can offer picks 3, 4 and 6, along with young talent like Shakira Austin or Aaliyah Edwards, in exchange for Bueckers. Again: a trio of rookies in this draft may be worth less with each passing prospect choosing to avoid it, but anyone signed to a current-CBA deal, potentially locked in for four years, is going to be immensely valuable under any new salary structure.
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Many of the league sources I spoke to are split on whether Dallas or Washington is the better scenario for Bueckers. Several praised Curt Miller and believed the Wings would offer direction under him that has been missing. Others pointed out that while the Mystics’ front office lacked experience, the recent track record and turnover in Dallas makes a four-year commitment difficult to fathom for Bueckers.
Contrary to much of the public chatter, none of this is particularly new, even for the WNBA. Back in 2017, top overall pick Kelsey Plum debated whether or not to sign with the San Antonio Stars after she learned there was disagreement among Stars decision-makers over whether or not to draft her. (A deal that would have sent her to Chicago on draft night for picks 2 and 9 had been agreed to, then nixed at the ownership level.)
And just last year, multiple league sources tell The Next, Angel Reese chose not to interview with every potential team who requested the chance to do so.
One of those teams? The Dallas Wings.
