Dom Amore: Mark Cuban predicts UConn's Paige Bueckers would feel the love in Dallas

HARTFORD, Conn. — Dallas has lost one basketball megastar, and has not been too happy about it. Barring something unforeseen, Big D’s about to get another.

Paige Bueckers, you may have heard, is expected to be the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft on Monday and, with UConn’s national championship still fresh in minds, would go to the Dallas Wings, who hold the pick.

“Dallas will love her,” Mark Cuban, former majority owner of the Mavericks, told The Hartford Courant via email on Tuesday. “We have an amazing basketball community. She will be loved the second she steps off the plane.”

If you’re a basketball player heading to Dallas, who’d be better to offer a welcome than Mark Cuban? One of the stars of the entrepreneurial reality show “Shark Tank,” Cuban sold his majority stake in the Mavs in 2021, but has been critical of the current management’s trade of Luka Doncic to the Lakers on Feb. 1, making it known he had nothing to do with it despite the minority stake he still holds in the franchise. The Mavericks got Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a first-round pick in 2029 for Doncic, a popular player considered “generational.” Dallas is 7-13 since the trade.

Bueckers’ arrival in Dallas probably won’t assuage the feelings of angry Mavericks fans, but could provide a new face for basketball in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. As Caitlin Clark’s arrival in Indianapolis showed, this kind of women’s basketball player at the height of her fame can hit even a big market like a cyclone. Bueckers has the star power to put be a blinking light on the radar of Cowboys Country, which is hard for any player in any other sport to do.

She was a social media powerhouse before she got to UConn, building Instagram followers, currently at 2.3 million, as a high school recruit. She has been a name, image, likeness powerhouse at UConn, earning an estimated $1.4 million last year.

Her story, overcoming knee injuries, returning to UConn for a fifth season to make up for the one she lost and leading the Huskies to the national championship in her last chance to do it, adds significantly to her national profile and mystique.

All this, in addition to her all-around basketball abilities, the Wings won the chance to bring to Dallas when they won the draft lottery in November.

Clark, appearing with former UConn greats Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi on “The Bird and Taurasi Show” during the Final Four, said Bueckers could kick-start the franchise.

“I think she’ll honestly fit right in,” Clark said, during ESPN’s alternate broadcast. “[College Park Center, the Wings’ home arena] is fun to play in, too. It’s a small place, it’s loud. You know honestly, they should move every game to American Airlines (home of the Mavericks) because I think Paige has that type of draw. She’ll be able to bring those types of fans in.”

The Wings are moving into a new arena/convention center in 2026. The WNBA drew a record 2.35 million fans in 2024, a 48% increase over the previous season. However, Dallas (9-31) was second from the bottom in record and attendance, averaging 5,911 fans per game.

“We’re really excited about the momentum in Dallas and everything that’s going on,” new GM Curt Miller told reporters in Dallas. “We have not heard anything directly that any person eligible for this draft would not want to play in Dallas.”

The LA Sparks won eight games, and the perception was that Bueckers was looking forward to playing in Los Angeles. Since Dallas got the pick, there has been speculation on and off that she might not want to play there.

Bueckers does have another year of college eligibility, but has said she will go into the W Draft. (“That’s the plan.”) She could sit out the WNBA season and play in Europe or in the new Unrivaled league, in which she is one of the players investing. But if she uses leverage to force Dallas to trade her, she would risk starting her career off on a bad foot.

She has said little publicly of her intentions.

“I don’t know. The reports are the reports,” Bueckers said during the Final Four in Tampa, Fla. “People write stories, and it’s, whatever. Honestly, I’m not really worried about that at the moment. I’m just worried about being here, being present with the team and trying to get better every single day. So whatever the future may hold, it’s only in God’s hands.”

Asked if she had a preference, she said, “nowhere specific. Wherever I end up.”

Dallas has made no secret of its interest in Bueckers. Miller, former Connecticut Sun coach, sat courtside at Mohegan Sun Arena for the Big East Tournament, and has been seen at other UConn games, as has new Wings coach Chris Koclanes.

UConn coach Auriemma said he has not spoken with the Wings about Bueckers. Some GMs or coaches in the league talk to him first, some draft UConn players without talking to him.

“She knows she’s going to be playing somewhere in the WNBA next year,” Auriemma said. “She knows she’s going to have her hands full because it’s not going to be like college. She also knows there is a whole ‘nother life out there she hasn’t experienced yet. My advice is going to be to do what she’s been doing the last four years, because she’s been living the life of a professional basketball player. Because of the name, image, likeness that has come to women’s basketball, and other sports, she has been a pro basically for the last five years.”

Would the Wings, or Bueckers, deprive Dallas of another generational basketball player? Assuming not, Bueckers will go to DFW with enormous expectations, something she’s lived with all her basketball career. She’ll go to a place, if Cuban is correct, ready to embrace her, but as a professional she won’t get as much slack in one of the biggest markets in the country.

“So now it becomes a job, now she’s going to work,” Auriemma said. “There is a certain, what’s the word? Innocence, to college. Next year, that’s all gone.”