Paige Bueckers’ WNBA destination: Pop star predicts where the UConn guard will land in 2025

Bueckers is already expected to be the top pick in next year’s draft

Paige Bueckers' WNBA destination: Pop star predicts where the UConn guard will land in 2025

While WNBA fans are watching the loaded 2024 rookie class learn and grow with each passing week, there is a temptation to look at who is coming next: the Paige Bueckers-led 2025 class. Bueckers is projected to be the top overall selection in next year’s WNBA draft, and her final season in the NCAA with the Connecticut Huskies has championship expectations affixed to it.

However, no one knows yet where Bueckers will begin her pro career in 2025. Three teams in the WNBA — including Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever — have one win or fewer this season. Meanwhile, a new expansion franchise will begin play next season as well, meaning the race is well and truly on for the do-it-all UConn guard.

The race for Bueckers: Golden State vs. Washington?

Singer and San Francisco native Kehlani has tipped Bueckers to be the Golden State Valkyries’ first franchise player, when the Golden State Warriors-owned team enters the WNBA in 2025. Kehlani has voiced her hope that Bueckers is “on the right side of history” by beginning her professional career in a city that already boasts Stephen Curry and the usually star-studded Dubs.

Kehlani hopes Paige Bueckers is drafted by WNBA's Golden State team

However, it may not be up to Bueckers to decide where her career in the W will tip off. The nascent Valkyries will be dropped into the draft lottery and hope for the best, as the league will almost certainly not grant the Joe Lacob-owned team the rights to the first overall pick immediately.

In addition, the Fever (1-6), the Los Angeles Sparks (1-4), and the Washington Mystics (0-6) are all longstanding WNBA franchises with better odds to secure the #1 pick next season. That is especially true of the rebuilding Mystics, who selected Bueckers’ UConn teammate Aaliyah Edwards with the sixth pick in last month’s draft — a sign, perhaps, that the franchise is preparing to reunite her with Bueckers next year.

Bueckers’ future in the pros is likely to be a dominant narrative throughout her final college season, when she will try to lead the Huskies to their first national title since 2016 before signing off from the NCAA — and as teams on either coast jostle for the right to pick her next April.