Dallas Wings lose another key player as WNBA injury woes mount

The Dallas Wings have struggled this season and are hanging out at the bottom of the WNBA standings with a record of 1-11. They’ve already lost two players to Eurobasket (Luisa Geiselsöder and Teaira McCowan) and waived Kaila Charles as well. It was also only last week that guard Ty Harris was ruled out for the rest of the season. While they did add another player by trading for Li Yueru, they have now lost another player.

The Wings announced Monday that third-year player Maddy Siegrist, whom the Wings drafted No. 3 overall in 2023, had sustained an anterolateral tibial plateau fracture in her right knee. This is a fracture at the very top of your tibia (leg bone), where it meets at the joint in your knee. It can also damage the cartilage in the joint as well as the meniscus.

Siegrist will not require surgery to repair the injury, though she will be out recovering for an undetermined amount of time. Experts online are estimating that she will be out 6-8 weeks, which potentially could see her coming back at the end of the regular season, but depending on how recovery and conditioning go, she may not make it back before the Wings finish their 2025 campaign.

This is just the latest setback for the Wings this year. The joy of getting the No. 1 overall draft pick and selecting Paige Bueckers was quickly overshadowed by a lack of cohesion on the court and injury issues, even before they announced Harris was out with an injury for the remainder of the season. Add on losing players for Eurobasket, and it’s been rough for Dallas.

Making matters worse, head coach Chris Koclanes (who is in his first head coaching gig) appears to be struggling to maintain what little grasp of his locker room he gained in training camp. There are numerous online videos of him disagreeing with players during games, and speculation that it could be a big reason for the team’s struggles is constant.

It feels like this Wings team is a ticking time bomb already, and having one of your longest tenured players out for most of the season certainly won’t help. Even just 12 games into a 44-game season, it feels like there is little hope for Dallas to turn this around. At the very least, they aren’t in a Chicago-type situation where they don’t own their pick, but they likely did not expect to be 1-11 either.

They may have the space now to sign another hardship contract to replace Siegrist while she recovers, but it may be too late to find anyone who can make a serious impact on this disastrous situation.