Wings vs. Tempo: Paige Bueckers Posts 22 and 7 as Dallas Beats Toronto Wire to Wire

Five 3-pointers on the first six tries. That was the Dallas Wings' opening argument on Sunday afternoon at Coca-Cola Coliseum, and by the time the Toronto Tempo finished checking the math, they were already chasing a game they would never lead.

Paige Bueckers scored 22 points with seven assists, rookie Azzi Fudd buried five 3s, Jessica Shepard hauled in 15 rebounds, and Dallas closed out an 89-76 wire-to-wire win in the first meeting these two teams have ever played. The Wings moved to 13-8. Toronto, back on the floor for the first time since June 27, fell to 9-11.

Thirty Points Before Anyone Got Comfortable

Dallas came out on a 9-2 run behind 3s from Fudd, Bueckers and Awak Kuier. Marina Mabrey hit back with two of her own to make it 9-8, which turned out to be the closest Toronto would get all day. Then came 10 straight Wings points in under two minutes, with Fudd and Arike Ogunbowale going back-to-back from deep, and suddenly it was 19-8 with 4:36 left in the quarter.

The 3s stopped falling after that, with Dallas finishing the period 5-for-10 from distance, and it hardly mattered. Nyara Sabally's shot at the horn only trimmed it to 30-19, and those 30 points stood as Dallas' best first quarter of the season, according to the team.

The second quarter had a different energy. A Bueckers three-point play made it 44-31 with 2:43 left in the half, and this thing looked ready to be filed under blowouts. Instead the Tempo got busy, finishing the half on an 11-3 run that ended when Mabrey laid one in with two seconds on the clock. A blowout in progress was 47-42 at the break.

Twenty-Two Points Is the New Slump

Bueckers arrived in Toronto on a run of four straight games with at least 25 points. That streak ended here, and her version of a comedown was 9-of-16 shooting, a perfect 3-of-3 at the line, seven assists and a plus-25 in 31 minutes. The Wings' own count has her at 22 or more in five straight games, which they list as the longest active run of its kind in the WNBA. If that's a slump, every coach in the league would like to order one.

Fudd supplied the fireworks. Three days after a 4-point night on 2-of-7 shooting in Hartford, she came back with 17 points, 12 of them by halftime, on 5-of-11 from deep, plus three steals and a block. The team says she is the only rookie this season with two games of at least five 3s.

Shepard handled the unglamorous stuff with very glamorous numbers: 14 points, 15 rebounds, six of them offensive, and a game-best plus-27. It was her 12th double-double of the season, second in the league behind Atlanta's Angel Reese by the team's count. Ogunbowale had a rough shooting day, 4-of-13 overall and 1-of-7 from 3, but she still reached 10 points and grabbed a season-high six boards. Kuier added 10 points, six rebounds and a season-high three blocks. That made five Wings in double figures for the seventh time this season, and Dallas is 7-0 in those games.

Toronto got 19 points, five rebounds and five assists from Mabrey on 7-of-18 shooting. She had missed the June 27 loss to Phoenix with neck spasms, two days after her 53-point game against the Sparks tied the WNBA's single-game record. Sabally posted 14 points, seven boards and five assists, Isabelle Harrison scored 13, and Kia Nurse gave the Tempo 12 off the bench, six of those in the final 2:12 with the result already settled.

Sixty-Eight Seconds in the Third

If Toronto was ever going to turn this into a real game, it was right after halftime. Harrison scored the first bucket of the third to make it 47-44, and the Tempo had momentum and a crowd of 8,210 ready to get loud.

Dallas took all of that away in 68 seconds. Eight straight points, four of them from Shepard, made it 55-44 and sent Toronto to its bench for a timeout. The Tempo did have one more charge in them, seven in a row to turn 63-48 into 63-55 with 3:30 left in the period, but Dallas finished on an 8-4 spurt and carried a 71-59 lead to the fourth.

When Toronto got it to 75-66 with 5:54 to go, the Wings ended the conversation with 11 unanswered. Bueckers scored four of them, including a 15-foot floater, Ogunbowale added a three-point play, Fudd found Kuier for a running layup, and Sug Sutton's bucket made it 86-66 with 2:46 left.

Stats That Matter

• 20-6: Dallas' edge in second-chance points, powered by 16 offensive rebounds.
• 23-16: Dallas' edge in points off turnovers, on a day when Toronto gave it away 14 times to the Wings' 11.
• 10-10: Each team made 10 3s, so the gap came from elsewhere, including 13-of-14 Dallas free-throw shooting and a 38-32 lean in the paint.
• 39 percent: Toronto's shooting on 28-of-72. Maria Conde's 10 rebounds came with a 1-of-10 line from the field.
• Plus-16 or better: Every Dallas starter hit that mark. Every reserve but Alanna Smith finished in the minus column, which tells you exactly who won this game.
• Plus-16 or better: Every Dallas starter hit that mark. Every reserve but Alanna Smith finished in the minus column, which tells you exactly who won this game.

What It Means

Dallas has won two straight and sits at 13-8, including 7-5 on the road. The next stop is New York on Tuesday. Toronto is 9-11 and 5-5 at home, with back-to-back losses around that long layoff. Golden State comes to town on Wednesday, and the Wings and Tempo meet again on Friday in Montreal, according to the Dallas schedule note.

Beating the Level Without the Special Meter

There is a particular kind of menace in a team whose star comes down from four straight 25-point games, scores 22 and still wins by 13. In video game terms, Dallas cleared this level without touching the special meter. Toronto will want another crack at it. It gets one in five days.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details as reported by the Associated Press and the Dallas Wings.