The Minnesota Lynx visit the Dallas Wings on Thursday night, and the matchup comes with a built-in frame: the teams that held the first two picks in the 2026 WNBA Draft meet at College Park Center at 7 p.m. Minnesota used the No. 2 pick on Olivia Miles, while Dallas took Azzi Fudd with the top selection.
For Dallas, the game is the third straight against a 2025 playoff team, a stretch that has already started with a 77-72 loss to the Atlanta Dream on Tuesday night. The Wings are still trying to show that a busy offseason can move them closer to the standard set by last season’s playoff teams, and this meeting with Minnesota is another early test.
Miles has looked ready for the stage. She scored 21 points and had eight assists in a 91-90 loss to Atlanta in her regular-season debut, then followed that with 13 points, six rebounds and seven assists in an 88-84 win over the Phoenix Mercury on Tuesday night. She started both of her first two games and is expected to start against Dallas.
The former Notre Dame guard arrived in the draft after one season at Texas Christian University, just about 30 minutes from the Wings’ home arena. At TCU, Miles averaged 19.6 points, 6.6 assists, 7.2 rebounds and 1.2 steals per game. Before transferring, she had already built a strong three-year run at Notre Dame, where she averaged 14.2 points, 6.5 assists and six rebounds per game.
Minnesota entered the season with a recent standard that still matters. The Lynx finished last year 34-10, led the Western Conference and reached the semifinals before losing in four games to the Phoenix Mercury. That history gives Thursday’s game a little more weight than a typical early-season road trip, because Minnesota is trying to stay in the contender class while Dallas is still building around its new core.
Fudd’s debut has been quieter. She scored three points on 1-of-3 shooting against the Fever, then was listed as out against Atlanta because of a knee injury. Wings coach Jose Fernandez said she was held out out of an abundance of caution. Dallas will want her back soon, especially with the team shooting 30.4% from beyond the arc last season, even as Fudd shot 44.7% from 3-point range and averaged 17.3 points, 3.1 assists and 2.6 rebounds.
The contrast between the two draft headliners is part of what makes this game worth watching. Miles shot 40.6% from the 3-point line in her final season at Notre Dame, then 35.1% from deep last season while still hitting 48.1% from the field. Fudd shot 48.1% from the field last season, and Dallas drafted her to raise the ceiling of a team that now has to prove it can climb faster than the league’s better teams are willing to let it.
Thursday night will not settle that debate, but it will show how the first two picks of the draft look when the lights come on together. For the Wings, it is another chance to measure progress against a playoff opponent. For the Lynx, it is an early look at whether Miles can keep translating her all-around game into wins as the season opens in earnest.
