{"id":204656,"date":"2025-10-06T08:10:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T08:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/204656\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T08:10:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T08:10:14","slug":"paige-bueckers-surprised-with-roty-trophy-on-jennifer-hudsons-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/204656\/","title":{"rendered":"Paige Bueckers surprised with ROTY trophy on Jennifer Hudson’s show"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dallas Wings<\/a> star Paige Bueckers<\/a> received her Rookie of the Year award at an unlikely location.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/a><\/p>\n

Bueckers, the No. 1 pick of the 2025 WNBA draft, was named the 2025 Rookie of the Year on Tuesday, making her the seventh former UConn Huskies player to earn the honor.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday morning, Bueckers took the runway for “The Jennifer Hudson Show,” which is known for hyping guests moments before they go on air by having them walk down a tunnel with staff cheering on either side.<\/p>\n

As Bueckers walked down the hallway, staff from the show sang “Paige Bueckers at J Hud, shooting buckets, she’s the one.”<\/p>\n

Bueckers danced her way down the hall before doing a double take, realizing WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert was present with Bueckers’ Rookie of the Year hardware.<\/p>\n

“Bet I’m the last person you thought you’d see on this cool spirit tunnel,” Engelbert told Bueckers.<\/p>\n

Engelbert presented Bueckers with the award before the staff erupted with a “rookie of the year” chant for the Wings star.<\/p>\n

Bueckers is the 16th No. 1 overall pick to win the honor. Her 44 points against the Los Angeles Sparks<\/a> on Aug. 20 set a single-game rookie scoring record.<\/p>\n

Bueckers started in all 36 games for Dallas, where she averaged 19.2 points, 5.4 assists, 3.9 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas Wings star Paige Bueckers received her Rookie of the Year award at an unlikely location. Editor’s Picks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-204656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}