{"id":52504,"date":"2025-08-01T12:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/52504\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T12:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:30:08","slug":"dream-unknowingly-handed-wings-the-best-gift-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/52504\/","title":{"rendered":"Dream unknowingly handed Wings the best gift possible\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a tough season for the Wings. With only eight wins, Dallas has the third-worst record in the WNBA. While there haven\u2019t been many wins, there have been plenty of other bright spots to get Wings fans excited. Paige Bueckers\u2019s Rookie of the Year campaign is one. A recent 92-82 win over the New York Liberty<\/a> is another. Haley Jones\u2019s emergence was also a nice surprise.<\/p>\n

Much like the Wings, Jones hasn\u2019t had an easy 2025 season. First, she was waived by the Dream, the team that drafted her sixth overall in 2023. Then, she signed a hardship contract with the Mercury, played four games, and was waived again. She landed another hardship contract with the Wings before officially signing with the team until the end of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jones is thriving with the Wings.<\/p>\n

The Wings have unlocked Haley Jones<\/p>\n

While Haley Jones joined the Dream as a high first-round pick, her minutes and impact were limited. As a rookie, she only played 14.6 minutes per game and averaged 3.7 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 2.3 assists. In her sophomore season, her minutes went up a bit, but her production stayed basically the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Dallas, Jones has gotten a chance to play big minutes and significantly up her production. She played at least 26 minutes in all of the Wings\u2019 last five games, logging two starts, and only scored fewer than ten points once. She was also active on the boards and dished out a bunch of assists. Over that stretch, the Wings recorded two big wins over New York and Seattle.<\/p>\n

With four double-digit scoring nights in five games, Jones already matched the number of games in which she recorded at least ten points in her rookie season. In her second season, she did it six times.<\/p>\n

A big change has been that Wings head coach Chris Koclanes is utilizing Jones in a frontcourt role rather than playing her as a big guard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Wings have another young talent to develop now<\/p>\n

The Wings are retooling, trying to develop a group of young players. Paige Bueckers, Luisa Geisels\u00f6der, Aziaha James, JJ Quinerly, and Maddy Siegrist are all 25 or younger. Now, the Wings have another player who fits that age group and has shown great potential.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So far, Jones has played 10 games with the Wings. While this is a very small sample size, her on\/off numbers have been impressive. When Jones is on the court, the Wings have a net rating of 8.6. When she is off the court that number plummets to -7.8.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those numbers will likely stabilize over time, but that doesn\u2019t diminish the fact that Jones is blossoming with the Wings and could even fit into the team\u2019s long-term plans.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been a tough season for the Wings. With only eight wins, Dallas has the third-worst record in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-52504","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\/52504","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=52504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}