Dallas Wings star Paige Bueckers was a runaway choice for WNBA Rookie of the Year after one of the best debut seasons in league history.<\/p>\n
Bueckers received 70 of the 72 votes from sports writers and broadcasters in balloting announced by the league on Tuesday. The other two went to Washington Mystics guard Sonia Citron.<\/p>\n
Bueckers, who in a whirlwind week last spring went from leading UConn to its 12th national championship to being drafted with the No. 1 overall pick, was a bright spot on a team that tied the Chicago Sky with a league-worst 10-34 record. The AP Rookie of the Year, she averaged 19.2 points on 47.7% shooting along with 3.9 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 1.6 steals.<\/p>\n
But those numbers don’t tell the complete story.<\/p>\n
Her 692 points and 194 assists were the third most by a WNBA rookie. The highlight was when she scored 44 in a loss to the Los Angeles Sparks on Aug. 20.<\/p>\n
It was the WNBA’s highest point total this season and the most ever by a rookie. She also became the first player in league history to score 40 or more while shooting 80% in a game. That performance came near the end of a 30-game double-digit streak, the third longest to start a career behind A\u2019ja Wilson’s 33 games in 2018 and Candace Parker’s 32 games in 2008.<\/p>\n
Though Bueckers was widely expected to receive rookie of the year honors, the way she was presented the trophy was a surprise \u2014 ahead of an appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show. She was walking through the program’s Spirit Tunnel when Commissioner Cathy Engelbert stopped her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI bet I\u2019m the last person you thought you\u2019d see on this cool spirit tunnel,\u201d she said before handing the trophy to a grinning Bueckers. \u201cBut I\u2019m here to present you with the 2025 Kia WNBA Rookie of the Year Award. Congratulations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crew chanted \u201cRookie of the Year! Rookie of the Year!\u201d as Bueckers headed toward the studio. She turned and thanked them.<\/p>\n
Bueckers made an immediate impact when she arrived at UConn in 2020. She was the consensus national player of the year as a freshman and became a three-time All-American. She played just 17 games her second season and sat out the 2022-23 campaign with a torn ACL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas Wings star Paige Bueckers was a runaway choice for WNBA Rookie of the Year after one of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":231848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1497,1596,1488,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,1514,10190],"class_list":{"0":"post-231847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-chicago-sky","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-los-angeles-sparks","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-tx","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa","20":"tag-washington-mystics","21":"tag-wires-bot"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115215115522087211","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}