The Dallas Wings will finally play their first postseason game in the Paige Bueckers era, and it would be safe to say that they would have chosen any other team but the defending champions, the Las Vegas Aces. While Bueckers and her team have numbers to support their chances should they face the Aces in the first round, Bueckers, a student of the game, is well aware of who exactly they could potentially be matched up against.

“I don’t want to give anybody any bulletin board material. I understand the Aces are a different beast come playoff,” Bueckers said while speaking to Post W in the postgame interview. “So, regardless of what anybody’s record was during the regular season, what we were in a series, it’s a whole new ballgame.”

The Aces have overall been the better team this season compared to the Wings. However, Dallas has been dominant against them in head-to-head matchups this regular season.

The Wings won the preseason matchup and two of the three times they have met during the regular season. But Bueckers is well-versed in how great an A’ja Wilson-led team can be in the postseason.

There’s no denying that the Aces have been one of the best teams in the league over the last few years, winning three championships since 2022. Everyone remembers their fairytale run last season.

Midway through last season, the Aces sat at 14-14 after suffering a brutal 53-point loss to the Minnesota Lynx. At that point, even making the playoffs seemed like a stretch, let alone making a deep run once they got there. But A’ja Wilson made sure that wasn’t the case.

She sent a clear, no-nonsense message to her teammates: “I feel like one thing I did do is send a message to them and just say if you weren’t embarrassed from yesterday, then don’t come into this gym. You’re not needed or wanted here.” And from there, everything changed.

The Aces went on to put together the second-longest winning streak in WNBA history, rattling off 16 straight victories before eventually winning the championship. Wilson also became the first player to win DPOY, MVP, the scoring title, Finals MVP, and the championship in the same season.

So, if there’s one team you can never count out in the playoffs, it’s the Aces. That’s exactly why Paige is planning to leave it all on the floor in her first postseason series.

“Everybody in the first round is just trying to win two, but one game at a time. It’s just like it’s only a matter of two games in the first series. It’s one-one-one, and you just have to give your all,” she said. “There’s literally nothing left to give. The postseason is all about heart, toughness and mental fortitude to weather the storms.”

The opposing team to face the Wings in the first round is still not decided. The Aces and the Valkyries still have one game each left to play in the regular season. Dallas will meet the Golden State Valkyries if the latter win their last game.

However, if the Valkyries lose and the Aces win on Thursday, Wings will face Las Vegas, which will take the No. 2 spot. Whichever team Bueckers and Co. face in the first round, they seem ready for the challenge.

“We’re not taking anything for granted, and we understand that teams are very very good and teams are playing their best basketball right now. We take no opponent lightly, and everybody’s trying to win a championship. So everybody’s gonna play at an extremely high level,” she added.

The Wings have been a far better team than they were last year. In fact, they even set a new WNBA record for the biggest single-season turnaround. The Wings won 27 games this season, a massive 17-win increase from their 10-win total last year.

However, it is hard to put them over any of the top four teams, especially with a compromised roster. Azzi Fudd is missing the remainder of the season with a season-ending injury, while no timeline has been set for Alanna Smith’s return. Fudd and Smith’s absences have now compromised the Wings on both ends of the floor.

Despite those absences, Dallas is still among the top six teams on both ends of the floor. They rank fifth in offensive rating (111.3) and sixth in defensive rating (106.4) this season. While the Aces have better offensive numbers, the Wings are ahead of them in defensive rating.

On the other hand, if they face the Valkyries in the first round, they will have to go against the best defensive team in the WNBA this season that plays a highly physical style of basketball. 

Regardless of who the Wings face, Bueckers seems ready to give it everything she has in her first postseason run.