A 17-win climb meets a two-seed: Wings take the turnaround into Chase Center

Playoff basketball does not grade on improvement curves. It grades on whether a seven-seed can take a game from a two-seed on the road.

The Dallas Wings just posted the largest single-season win increase in WNBA history, the Associated Press reported after Wednesday's 103-91 win at Seattle closed a 27-17 year. Last season's club won 10 games. This one won 27.

NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth noted that no Wings team since the franchise moved from Tulsa in 2016 had previously cleared 22 wins. The reward for that climb is not a soft draw. It is Golden State in a best-of-three that opens Sunday at Chase Center.

ESPN lists the first tip for Sunday, Sept. 27, at 9 p.m. on USA Network. Dallas is the No. 7 seed. The Valkyries are the No. 2 seed. Every first-round Game 1 across the bracket falls on Sunday, per ESPN's overnight matchup roundup.

The film the staff already has

Wednesday's finale gave Dallas a closing tape that looks like the version of this roster that climbed the standings. Paige Bueckers scored 25 points with seven assists. Jessica Shepard posted a sixth triple-double with 20 points, 11 rebounds and 12 assists.

Arike Ogunbowale scored 23. Awak Kuier and Bueckers hit consecutive late threes after Seattle trimmed a double-digit lead, and the Wings finished a 4-0 season series against the Storm for the first time in franchise history, the AP reported via CBS Sports.

Mavs Moneyball framed the postgame mood around urgency rather than celebration, quoting Bueckers on intensity and limited margin for error. That tone fits a seven-seed better than a parade. The regular-season climb is finished. The series that tests it starts on the road against a club that spent the year in the top tier of the West.

What a two-seed forces

Golden State earned home court. Dallas earned a return to the playoffs for the first time since 2023. Those two facts sit in the same sentence now. A road opener against the two-seed means the Wings have to win once in San Francisco or win twice in a short series that gives them only one guaranteed home date.

NBC 5 reported after the Storm game that College Park Center will host Game 2, with tickets already on sale. That home night only becomes decisive if Dallas is alive when the series reaches Arlington. An 0-1 deficit is manageable. An 0-2 deficit ends the season before the home crowd gets a second look.

The Wings spent September chasing and then locking a seed. That chapter closed in Seattle. The next one asks whether a roster built around Bueckers, Ogunbowale and Shepard's playmaking can generate enough half-court stops and late-clock answers against a top-two defense on the road.

From record to series

Seventeen wins of improvement bought Dallas a seat in the field and a first-round date that will not flatter the standings climb. Sunday at Chase Center is the first measurement that matters in October terms. USA Network carries Game 1. College Park Center waits on the other side of the bracket's shortest round.

The turnaround already made the playoffs. The Valkyries will decide how long it lasts.

Sources

CBS Sports

ESPN

mavsmoneyball.com

NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth