ARLINGTON, Texas — A year ago, the Dallas Wings went 10-34. This is not that team. They opened the season with a road win at Indiana, hung around in almost everything since, and on Thursday came back to beat the Las Vegas Aces 95-87 at College Park Center. That makes them 5-3. It was their second win in a row, four days after they handled the New York Liberty 91-76.
Jessica Shepard was the reason. She finished with 22 points, 20 rebounds, and 10 assists in front of a sellout crowd of 6,251, and no one in WNBA history had ever put up a 22-20-10 stat line. It tied her career high in scoring and set a new one on the glass. None of it was a fluke, either. Shepard leads Dallas in rebounding at 11.4 and in assists at 6.5, which is not the usual job description for a center.
“For me, these things don’t really matter so much,” Shepard said. “I came here to help this organization win and kind of take that next step. So I’m just proud of this team for being able to come back and beat a team like Las Vegas tonight.”
Thursday wasn’t an outlier. It was the season in one night. Dallas leads the WNBA in assists at 23.4 a game while turning it over just 11.8 times, the best assist-to-turnover ratio in the league at 1.99. The ball movement, not the shooting, is what gives Dallas the best offensive rating in the league at 112.7.
Jessica Shepard was on the grill today🍴
She dropped her second triple-double of the szn to help the @DallasWings defeat Vegas!
22 PTS | 20 REB (career-high) | 10 AST
She also joined Alyssa Thomas as the second player in league history to have a 20+ PT and 20+ REB triple… pic.twitter.com/5KbabKLVmj
— WNBA (@WNBA) May 29, 2026
Second-Half Surges Define the Dallas Wings’ Start
It followed a familiar flow. Dallas trailed 53-45 at the half, then outscored Las Vegas 50-34 the rest of the way. The Liberty win had the same shape, with Azzi Fudd dropping 17 of her then-career-high 24 in a third quarter that flipped it.
Jose Fernandez sees the same thing in both wins.
“I think it’s incredible resolve,” Fernandez said. “Coming out of halftime, we didn’t play well, and it’s an eight-point game. It just shows that we’ve done it with a lot of different lineups and with a lot of different people.”
The Wings shot 49.3% and went 10-of-22 from 3, and they assisted on 23 of their 33 baskets, the ball movement Fernandez keeps chasing. The lead Dallas erased had come off the Aces’ bench, which scored 22 by halftime behind Chennedy Carter.
“Basketball’s a game of runs and getting stops when you need them to,” Fernandez said. “We had players make huge plays.”
Azzi Fudd Settles Into a Starting Role
Fudd made her first career start and scored 22 on 9-of-15 shooting, 3-of-5 from 3. The No. 1 pick has scored 24 and 22 points in back-to-back games, the first off the bench in Brooklyn, the second as a starter. She is averaging 12.6 points on 57.1% shooting and 46.4% from deep, with the best plus-minus on the team at plus-9.9.
“Anytime I can step on the floor with this group, it’s an honor, and I don’t take it lightly,” Fudd said. “So again, to be on the floor, whether it’s coming off the bench, starting, I’m super grateful.”
Azzi really does this in her sleep 😭 pic.twitter.com/2NEMUH3E86
— Dallas Wings (@DallasWings) May 29, 2026
The jump has been gradual, not one breakout. Fudd credits comfort, aggression, and cutting the rookie hesitation.
“Not hesitating when I’m open, when Jess and K and them set me great screens, not hesitating to use them,” Fudd said. “But I think just reading what the game’s given me. Not ever trying to force to score, but just be aggressive.”
Fernandez sees a scorer who gets to her spots no matter the coverage.
“She’s very confident in her shot, and her teammates find her, which they should,” Fernandez said. “But what I like is when people crowd her, she can get to her spot either going right or left.”
Paige Bueckers and a Building Identity
Paige Bueckers had 20 points and 6 assists on 8-of-18 and ran the fourth quarter that put it away, including a full-court outlet to Shepard for a layup. She leads Dallas in scoring at 19.4 points per game and is shooting 45.7% from 3-point range.
The closing run was the loudest she has heard the building get.
“I can’t really remember a time where it’s gotten that loud and that electric,” Bueckers said. “But to feel that momentum and to feel the crowd behind us like that, it gave us a lot of energy, and it gave us a boost.”
BUECKERS BOMB 💣
The Wings come back from down 13 against the Aces on @primevideo ‼️ pic.twitter.com/OoG40BjZWF
— Sports on Prime (@SportsonPrime) May 29, 2026
Bueckers is not getting ahead of it.
“There is a standard that we want to uphold, and there’s an identity on both sides of the floor that we want to continue to keep building,” Bueckers said. “Game eight of a long season isn’t going to get us to the playoffs. But we want to continue to build from game to game, continue to get better, continue to stay humble and hungry.”
The identity shows up off the ball. Bueckers, Fudd, and Arike Ogunbowale all pull defensive attention, and when teams load up to take it away, they screen, cut, and play decoy to spring a teammate. It leaves Dallas with options on every possession, and over the last five games, the Wings have the league’s best assist-to-turnover ratio at 2.30.
Defense Holds Up Against the Aces’ Guards
The turnaround started on defense. Dallas held Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young to a combined 9-of-30 and made the Aces grind for everything. A’ja Wilson got her 21 points, but it took 24 shots. The Wings cleaned the defensive glass too, where they rank near the top of the league at 71.1%, and Shepard pulled 16 of her 20 boards on that end.
“Those are elite scorers,” Bueckers said of Gray and Young. “We just try to do our best to make them as tough as possible. Our bigs did a great job. We adjusted in the second half of being more up to touch and being more up in the ball screens.”
A lot of it ran through Awak Kuier, whom teammates call K. Her length let her switch and bother Wilson, and she hit two fourth-quarter 3s in a 12-point night. She has been efficient all year, shooting 53.8% from three off the bench.
“For her size and being able to stretch the floor, now she can draw defenders,” Fernandez said. “And with her stretching the floor, it opens up the lane for back cuts and for us to get paint touches off the bounce.”
Alysha Clark gave Dallas the kind of swing minutes that have come from someone different most nights. She was plus-11 in 18 minutes with 6 points, a corner three, and a late drawn foul against her former team.
“She does the right things and gets in the right spots,” Fernandez said. “It’s almost like having another coach on the floor.”
A Roster Reshaped Around Paige Bueckers and Arike Ogunbowale
Dallas spent the offseason rebuilding around Bueckers and Ogunbowale, and the headline signing was Alanna Smith, last year’s co-Defensive Player of the Year, alongside Shepard. Of the two, Shepard is the one who has taken off. Smith broke her nose in the preseason, has worn a mask since, and missed Thursday with an illness, so Dallas still hasn’t seen the real her. Kuier is back after a couple of seasons overseas. On the wing, Clark brings spacing and defense; Odyssey Sims gives them a backup ball handler; and the draft landed Fudd to play off the two guards.
Azzi Fudd made HISTORY in the third quarter 👏
Fudd scored 17 PTS in the quarter, tying for the second-most points scored in any quarter by a rookie in WNBA history. She’s also up to a career-high 21 PTS!
DAL-NYL | NBC & Peacock
Tap to watch: pic.twitter.com/A96vthmhxt
— WNBA (@WNBA) May 24, 2026
Dallas opened with a 107-104 win at Indiana, then lost two close ones at home to Atlanta by five and to Minnesota by four. The Wings routed Washington 92-69, won at Chicago, dropped an ugly rematch in Atlanta, and answered with wins over New York and Las Vegas to get to 5-3, all against the league’s toughest schedule by 2025 win percentages. Dallas led in the fourth quarter of all three losses and went up 64-63 in the Atlanta blowout before a 23-5 run flipped it.
Camp was short across the WNBA after the CBA process dragged out, and plenty of key players got back late from overseas, so chemistry coming together this fast is a surprise on its own. Fernandez runs a flow offense, heavy on handoffs and pick-and-roll with Shepard at the hub, and the cleaner it runs, the less Bueckers has to carry.
Defensive Adjustments in Dallas
The defense is the part still under construction, though it is gaining. Dallas ranks in the bottom third of the league in defensive rating at 107.3 for the season, but over the last five games, that is down to 105.4 with a plus-9.8 net rating, fourth-best in the league. The climb has come with Smith, a top defender, still not at her best.
The fix started after Minnesota shot 60% and beat Dallas on a late pick-and-roll. Ball-screen coverage has been the project since then, with Kuier’s length a big part of it. The paint is still the weak spot, Bueckers calls the team’s kryptonite: Dallas gives up the second-most points in the paint in the league, 46.0 a game.
Dallas runs off stops and defensive boards, and when that first break isn’t there, it hunts mismatches in the half-court. The funny thing is how little the Wings actually run: they sit near the bottom of the league in pace and still lead the league in fast-break points at 12.9 per game. They don’t get out often, but when they do, it counts.
“Probably nobody believed that we would have five wins right now and the type of wins that we’ve had,” Fernandez said. “But I think everybody in that locker room and the staff believed that.”
A Promising Start for the Wings
Fernandez has options for almost any matchup. He can go bigger with Li Yueru, smaller with a shooter like Maddy Siegrist, or add a ball handler in Sims, and Clark gives him a steady veteran. He has rarely needed all of it on the same night.
Fernandez isn’t acting like the job is done.
“The more time that we spend together, we’re not even close to being at the level that I think we can be at,” Fernandez said. “But again, it’s having that next-game mindset.”
Dallas is back on Monday against the Seattle Storm with a chance to get a sixth win — a feat not achieved last season until 19 games in.
Be sure to follow Grant Afseth on X, @GrantAfseth.
