{"id":913565,"date":"2026-09-29T03:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T03:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/913565\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T03:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T03:02:11","slug":"paige-bueckers-has-telling-reaction-after-21-point-wnba-playoff-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/913565\/","title":{"rendered":"– Paige Bueckers Has Telling Reaction After 21-Point WNBA Playoff Debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Paige Bueckers<\/a> scored 17 points in the first half of her first WNBA postseason game Sunday night, a franchise record for points in a half in a playoff debut. The rest of the Dallas Wings<\/a> went 5-of-23 over the same stretch, and the Golden State Valkyries<\/a> led 58-31 at halftime on the way to a 104-80 win in Game 1 at Chase Center.<\/p>\n

Bueckers finished with 21 points, 6 rebounds, and 2 assists on 9-of-10 shooting in 25:03. She made both of her three-point attempts and her only free throw, and she did not play in the fourth quarter with Dallas trailing 85-56. The 21 points left her one shy of the franchise record for a postseason debut.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPaige Bueckers Sees Every Coverage From Golden State Valkyries<\/p>\n

Bueckers made 4 of her 5 shots in the first quarter, including a pair of three-pointers, and had 11 points after 10 minutes. She went 3-of-3 in the second quarter while Golden State outscored Dallas 37-11, and 2-of-2 in the third. According to the Wings, her 90% shooting was the third-best field-goal percentage in a WNBA postseason game among players with at least 9 made field goals.<\/p>\n

During the regular season, Bueckers averaged 20.9 points on 51.2% shooting and set the franchise single-season record with 878 points. Against Golden State, she averaged 17.7 points on 44.2% shooting across three losses, including 15 points on 5-of-13 shooting in the June 17 meeting at Chase Center.<\/p>\n

The Valkyries allowed a league-low 75.1 points per game this season. Bueckers has also been around Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase long enough to know Golden State would come prepared for her.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll my buckets were tough. They make it extremely hard. They show shrinks. They have people in gaps. They showed multiple bodies. They blitz. They make every shot tough,\u201d Bueckers said. \u201cSo nothing about tonight was easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd their defense, like I said, has always been their calling card, and I know every single time, and as a team, they\u2019re really well connected,\u201d Bueckers continued. \u201cAnd Coach Nat, I\u2019ve been around her enough to know that her team is always going to be prepared and give your best shot defensively. So I know she\u2019s not pleased, even that they gave up 80 points. So I know every single night against them is going to be tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Bueckers had talked about leaning on her championship experience at UConn<\/a> going into her playoff debut. Sunday, she had 2 of Dallas\u2019 19 assists and 1 of its 10 turnovers.<\/p>\n

Paige Bueckers Calls Out Dallas Wings\u2019 Defensive Habit<\/p>\n

Golden State shot 13-of-18 in the second quarter, including 7-of-10 from three, and finished 18-of-36 from beyond the arc. Dallas went 6-of-20. Bueckers said the Valkyries never let their offense set the level of their defense, and that Dallas can take something from that.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir defense is really good, and they start with that. They don\u2019t let their offense dictate their defense,\u201d Bueckers explained. \u201cIt\u2019s really the other way around. So when they\u2019re flying around, getting stops, shots tend to go in more for them. So it\u2019s tough on a team like that where you\u2019re never going to get their worst night defensively.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, they might miss shots, they might miss threes, they might have an off night shooting, but they\u2019re always locked in defensively, and I think we can take something from that,\u201d Bueckers added. \u201cWe\u2019ve been a team that has a bad habit of letting made or missed shots dictate how hard we play on the defensive end, and this is the playoffs. So that\u2019s really unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wings coach Jos\u00e9 Fern\u00e1ndez said Golden State deserved a lot of credit for its 18-of-36 night from three, and that his staff will check on film how many of those shots were contested. The 18 three-pointers were the second-most by a team in a WNBA postseason game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure Paige was brutally honest about that,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez said. \u201cYour defense shouldn\u2019t dictate on how your offense is playing. We play a lot harder on the defensive end when the ball\u2019s going through the basket, and when you do that, things like this is going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dallas had no fast-break points in the first half, while Golden State had 7. The Valkyries outscored the Wings 54-18 from three-point range.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not good at math, but that\u2019s a lot more points from the three-point line than us,\u201d Bueckers said. \u201cSo that\u2019s not good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dallas hosts Golden State in Game 2 on Wednesday at College Park Center in Arlington. Tip-off is set for 8 p.m. CT on ESPN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Paige Bueckers scored 17 points in the first half of her first WNBA postseason game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-913565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}