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Paige Bueckers will be among the highest-paid rookies from this year’s draft class as the No. 1 pick by the Dallas Wings.
But her WNBA salary will pale in comparison to the money she’ll make playing in Unrivaled, a second-year startup league Bueckers reportedly signed with last week.
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Per Spotrac, Bueckers will make $247,688 on a three-year contract with the Wings that includes a fourth-year team option valued at $100,510. Here’s the breakdown:
2025: $78,8312026: $80,4082027: $88,4492028: $100,510 (team option)
Assuming the Wings pick up that fourth-year option, Bueckers’ average salary in her first four years in the WNBA works out to $92,469. She’ll make that as one of the biggest stars in the game and a player who’s expected to become one of the faces of the league as soon as she sets foot on a WNBA court.
Paige Bueckers, seen here prior to Monday’s WNBA Draft, was the No. 1 pick by the Dallas Wings. (Cindy Ord/Getty Images)
(Cindy Ord via Getty Images)
What Bueckers brings to WNBA
Bueckers joins the Wings after a sensational five-year run at UConn. She joined UConn in 2020 as one of the most heralded prospects in the history of women’s basketball. She paid off on the hype as a freshman while earning first-team All-America honors and winning the Wooden, Naismith and Associated Press awards as the National Player of the Year.
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A pair of devastating knee injuries then stunted her progress. A tibial plateau fracture and meniscus tear ended her 2021-22 season early. Then, an ACL tear cost her the entirety of the 2022-23 campaign.
After recovering, Bueckers responded to those injuries with another first-team All-America campaign in 2023-24 in her first season back from her ACL tear. Then, this past season, Bueckers was again named a first-team All-American and concluded her storybook career at UConn with her first national championship and the program’s first since 2016.
Bueckers is a star on and off the court and joins the Wings as one of the most coveted prospects in the history of the game. But that status won’t be reflected by her pay in the WNBA, which has struggled to keep up financially with salaries commensurate to the value provided by players amid an explosion in interest and growth in women’s basketball.
Where WNBA players go to make more money
The relatively low salaries have in the past prompted players to travel overseas during the WNBA offseason to play on considerably more lucrative deals in international play. Brittney Griner, for example, made more than quadruple her WNBA salary with more than $1 million per season to play in Russia prior to her arrest and imprisonment by the nation’s government for 10 months in 2022.
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Unrivaled, a three-on-three league that debuted this year during the WNBA’s offseason, now provides players an alternative to traveling overseas, and Bueckers will be the newest WNBA star to take part.
The value of her contract has not been reported. But the average Unrivaled salary during its inaugural 2025 season was $220,000, well more than twice the average salary of Bueckers’ anticipated rookie contract in the WNBA.
