2026 Dallas Wings
123 · 2026-06-12 · medium
Imagine that there was only one game, a single pastime for everyone on Earth, and because of humanity's lack of imagination everybody had to watch it all the time. The nightmare I'm describing is what normal life is like in most of Eastern Europe, and what the entire planet will be experiencing for the next five weeks. The FIFA World Cup 2026™ is here, and it's much bigger and more bloated than ever. (From now on, the number of participating teams will be whatever Shakira's age is.) You really had to fuck up a free lunch not to make it into a 104-game tournament with a Group L, but that's exactly what happened to every single country within driving distance of me. This hasn't cured World Cup fever, or caused anyone around here to seek out sporting alternatives, because everybody has betting apps now. Yesterday afternoon local time, BeIN Sports showed helicopter footage of the South Africa team bus for 45 minutes. It might as well have been the world's mildest police chase, because their crime was impersonating a footsoccer team. FIFA's 60th-ranked side disembarked at the Estadio Azteca, put on fake Brazil uniforms, and were down to nine men by the second hour of the match. Spending 40 days at Buffet Infinity is going to take its toll, four games per day, all those non-stop adboards for Dalian Wanda and Saudi PIF and America's Best Network. Most folks are going to be out of attention, patience, and/or spending money by the time DR Congo and Uzbekistan face off at Atlanta Stadium to finish up Group K. So why wait that long? Anyway, basketball. There's another big Copa coming up this summer, in a sport with no nine-digit media-rights kickback schemes or dubious peace prizes. That's right, the 20th FIBA Women's World Cup is now three months away, and the only controversy about it is why does the bear have a basketball for a head. Sixteen teams will face off in Berlin, and it will only take nine days to figure out which is best at the hoop, and it's going to be impeccably efficient and very Fahrvergnügen. In the meantime, there's the Dubbity. Only four of the 15 current WNBA teams are unwatchably terrible, and they're all legacy franchises with championships or come-closes so they'll be back. None are the two new entries, Toronto nor Portland; they both drafted well, have solid blueprints, and are hovering around break-even so far. What I'm trying to say is that female basketball has so much current pro-level talent – underscored by increased parity in EuroLeague Women this past season – that the W can skip the growing pains this time around and expand smoothly. In fact, I'm going to go so far as to declare this Hoop Girl Summer. The most compelling indicator that HGS is an actual Thing is that the Dallas Wings are actually good. The Bill Laimbeer-era Detroit Shock were a late training-camp cut for Zero Season, won three titles and then left for Oklahoma, because that's the way the league was in the early 2010s. Run by local businessmen with Tulsa King-villain acumen for six years, the Shock bottomed out at 3-31 and signed Marion Jones as a stunt. In only one of their ten seasons in Texas have the Wings finished over .500; they were beaten so comprehensively by Las Vegas in the 2023 playoffs that they retroactively wish they didn't. Point guard and luxury model Paige Bueckers is the Sky Ferreira of the WNBA, because when it comes to the Dallas Wings... everything's embarrassing. (Shout out to the Oceanic heads.) On Thursday night, in a city that will host Match 78 between the Group E and I runner-ups on June 30, the W counter-programmed the first night of FIFA with the post-Shock against defending West champs Phoenix. Backed by a capacity crowd at Arlington's College Park Center, the Wings blew the Mercury out by 15 points. Bueckers had 31 and shot 70 percent from the floor. Dallas is in fourth place. Hoop Girl Summer forever, bitches.
