Star Dallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale has been diagnosed with tendonitis in her right knee, according to a press release from the team.
Ogunbowale has missed the last three games for the Wings with a knee injury, which, until yesterday, was unspecified. No timeline for Ogunbowale’s return was announced in the release, and with just nine games left on Dallas’ 2025 schedule, it’s now unclear whether she will return at all this year. She missed three games in early July with a thumb injury.
Injuries and the resulting lack of continuity in first-year head coach Chris Koclanes’ rotations have been a major setback for the team trying to take a step forward from last year’s 9-31 debacle. The Wings sit at 9-26, just ahead of the Chicago Sky (8-26) and the last-place Connecticut Sun (7-27) in the WNBA standings, heading into Wednesday’s game at the Los Angeles Sparks. The Wings fell to the Sparks 97-96 at College Park Center in Arlington on Friday, after yet another fourth-quarter comeback attempt came up short.
Ogunbowale was the WNBA’s second-leading scorer a year ago, when she averaged 22.2 points, 5.1 assists and 4.6 rebounds per game. She dazzled the crowd at the 2024 WNBA All-Star Game, when she scored 34 points, all in the second half, to win MVP honors that night in Phoenix.
This year has been a tough one for Ogunbowale, though. All those numbers are down in her seventh year with the team, when she’s averaging 15.5 points, 4.1 assists and just 2.5 boards across 29 games played. If she’s unable to go the rest of the year, the 29 games played will be the lowest number of games played since 2020, her second year out of Notre Dame.
There have been questions about her fit in Koclanes’ offensive scheme, which employs a heavy dose of dribble-hand-off action that at times has hampered the Wings’ spacing on the court instead of freeing up ball-handlers, as it’s intended to do. Ogunbowale has failed to reach double-digit scoring on poor shooting nights seven times this year. Her shooting clips of 36.4% from the field and 30.4% from 3-point range mark the worst season averages of her career.
Ogunbowale is in the final year of a 3-year contract, and she was rumored to be on the trading block at the WNBA trade deadline a month ago, but nothing materialized. It will be interesting to see if she wants to re-sign with the team next year, how hard the team tries to keep her in the offseason and where she ends up after spending the first seven years of her pro career in Dallas.
Maddie Siegrist, who is averaging 16.2 points per game in the six games she’s played since coming back from the injured list after being out for more than two months, will no doubt become more of a focal point in the Wings’ offense as long as Ogunbowale remains out. Look for Grace Berger, who has started the last few games for Dallas at point guard after initially being signed to a hardship contract with the team, to remain in the starting lineup for the foreseeable.