Now It’s Us: Dallas Refused to Let the Season End
“Now It’s Us” covered College Park Center before the ball even went up. Forty-five minutes later, after a historic performance, unexpected answers and one of the loudest nights I’ve experienced in the building, those words felt like something more.
NOW IT’S US.
The words were already everywhere before the ball went up.
Dallas had called for a whiteout, and College Park Center understood the assignment. Every seat, from courtside to the rafters, had a white shirt waiting on it with NOW IT’S US stretched across the chest.
And honestly, the vibes were high from the beginning.
This didn’t feel like an arena nervously waiting for an elimination game to start. Fans were putting on their shirts, the building was filling up and there was already something to celebrate before Dallas scored a single point.
Jessica Shepard was officially the WNBA’s Most Improved Player.
And before tipoff, Dallas got to give her her flowers at home.
Before the Fight, Jess Got Her Flowers
Shepard had been announced as the 2026 WNBA Most Improved Player earlier in the day, but before tipoff, she was honored in front of the College Park Center crowd.
It was the perfect way to start the night.
Her first season in Dallas has been one long argument for what can happen when opportunity meets the right player. Shepard went from averaging 8.0 points, 7.3 rebounds and 2.6 assists in Minnesota last season to career highs of 14.5 points, 11.1 rebounds and 5.3 assists this year. She became a first-time All-Star starter, recorded six triple-doubles and helped Dallas return to the postseason.
Those numbers explain why she won the award, but being there for the recognition made it feel different. The crowd was already ready to celebrate, and Jess gave everybody their first reason. There was something special about watching a player get honored in front of the same people who'd spent an entire season watching that growth happen in real time. Before we had any idea what the next 45 minutes were going to give us, College Park Center was already loud.
Looking back, that feels important because the night didn't slowly become electric. It started there.
A whiteout. NOW IT'S US everywhere you looked. Jess getting her flowers. A playoff crowd that already seemed determined to make sure Golden State knew exactly whose building it had walked into.
Then the ball went up.
And somehow, it only got louder.
Golden State Had a Plan for Paige
There was nothing subtle about what Golden State wanted to do with Paige Bueckers.
They picked her up early, crowded her and tried to disrupt Dallas before the offense could settle into what it wanted. Every touch felt earned.
Arike said it herself afterward: Golden State didn't even want Paige touching the ball.
And when you think about the kind of player Paige has become, that defensive attention says plenty on its own. She's already become one of the league's most difficult players to contain, and Golden State's game plan treated her like one.
The Valkyries pressured her full court and disrupted Dallas' spacing, particularly early. Eventually, the Wings adjusted by getting Paige off the ball at times and allowing Shepard and others to initiate offense, pulling Golden State's defense into different positions and creating more room to attack. Paige finished with 10 points on 3-of-13 shooting.
But I don't think this is a story about Paige having a bad game.
I think it's a story about what happens when a defense spends that much energy trying to remove one of your best options.
Somebody else has to answer.
Dallas kept finding somebody.
Golden State had a plan for Paige.
Dallas had a team.
Alysha Clark Knew What Dallas Needed
Back in May, when I wrote about Alysha Clark for Underrated Spotlight, most of what I wanted people to notice had nothing to do with scoring.
Positioning. Communication. Timing. Experience. The ability to understand what a team needs without requiring the game to revolve around her.
Wednesday night, what Dallas needed was much easier to see.
They needed points.
Clark gave them 21 off the bench in an elimination game. It was a season high, and it came on a night when Dallas desperately needed production outside its usual places.
That's the thing about veteran players who've spent years learning how to fit into winning basketball. Sometimes fitting doesn't mean doing the quiet work everybody else overlooks. Sometimes it means recognizing that tonight, quiet isn't going to be enough.
Dallas needed somebody willing to score.
Clark was.
And she wasn't alone. Aziaha James added 13 points off the bench, giving Dallas another source of offense while Golden State continued devoting so much attention to disrupting Paige.
Little by little, the Wings kept finding another answer.
Then there was Arike.
Forty-Five
There are nights when Arike Ogunbowale makes basketball feel slightly unreasonable.
This was one of them.
She had 16 points by halftime, and she never stopped attacking. She got herself to the free-throw line. She found her three. And every time it felt like Dallas needed another jolt, somehow No. 24 was involved again.
By the end of the night, the stat line looked almost ridiculous.
45 points. Seven rebounds. Four assists.
She shot 12-of-23 from the field, 5-of-8 from three and 16-of-18 from the free-throw line. The 45 points set a new WNBA record for scoring in a playoff game.
Forty-five would've been remarkable under any circumstances.
These weren't normal circumstances.
Dallas was facing elimination, and Golden State wasn't going away. Gabby Williams was having an incredible night of her own, eventually finishing with 36 points. The Valkyries led by two entering the fourth quarter and kept finding ways to respond whenever Dallas threatened to take control.
Arike kept answering too.
And eventually, Dallas reached the moment where answering one more time was the only option left.
4.1 Seconds
This is the part where being there changes the way I'll remember it.
Dallas was down three.
There were 4.1 seconds left when Arike's three dropped through the basket and tied the game at 93.
Everybody in the building knew what the situation was. If Dallas didn't find three points, there probably wasn't going to be another home game. There wasn't going to be another chance to figure this series out. The season was sitting right there in front of us.
And then Arike shot it.
There are moments when a crowd gets louder gradually, when you can almost hear people realizing what happened in waves.
This wasn't one of those moments.
College Park Center erupted.
Not got loud.
Not cheered.
Erupted.
Whatever voice I had left went with that shot.
I was there to cover the game, but there are moments when the basketball fan in me is going to win. That was one of them.
For a few seconds, I wasn't thinking about how I was going to describe the shot later. I wasn't thinking about the box score or what section of the story it belonged in. I was yelling with everybody else.
The shot had gone in. Dallas was still alive. And somehow, after spending the final seconds preparing ourselves for the possibility that the season was over, we were getting five more minutes.
Five More Minutes
Apparently, forcing overtime wasn't enough for Arike.
She opened the extra period with another three.
Of course she did.
Golden State kept fighting. Williams tied the game at 98 with another three, and even overtime refused to become comfortable. But something about the building felt different by then.
Maybe it was the crowd. Maybe it was the momentum. Maybe it was what happens when you've already watched your season get within seconds of ending and somehow survive it.
Whatever it was, nobody was sitting quietly anymore.
Every Dallas basket brought another pop. Every stop felt enormous. Every whistle had thousands of people reacting at once. By that point, it felt less like we were watching overtime and more like everybody inside College Park Center was trying to drag the Wings through those final five minutes together.
Dallas didn't waste them.
Arike scored 11 points in overtime, and the Wings won the extra period 15–7. When the final buzzer sounded, the scoreboard read 108–100.
And this time, the buzzer actually meant final.
This One Took Everybody
It would be easy to tell Wednesday night as an Arike Ogunbowale story.
Forty-five points makes that tempting, and she deserves every bit of attention that comes with doing something nobody in WNBA playoff history had ever done before.
But sitting inside College Park Center, the night felt bigger than one performance.
Golden State came to Dallas with a plan. The Valkyries wanted to make Paige work for everything, even touching the basketball. They succeeded in making one of the league's best players uncomfortable.
Dallas could've spent the night trying to force its way through the same door anyway.
Instead, the Wings kept finding another one.
Alysha gave them 21 when they needed scoring. Aziaha gave them 13 off the bench. Paige kept navigating the attention Golden State sent her way. Jess helped Dallas adjust how it initiated the offense. Arike gave them 45 and, when regulation was almost gone, five more minutes.
But even 45 needed a team around it.
That's what I loved most about watching this one in person. The Wings didn't play like a team waiting for its stars to rescue it. They played like a team that understood everybody might be asked for something different before the night was over.
Sometimes it was a bucket. Sometimes it was initiating the offense. Sometimes it was defending, staying composed or simply refusing to let the possession, the game or the season end without another fight.
They fought from the opening tip until the final buzzer finally meant final.
And we felt every bit of it.
Every run. Every whistle. Every shot that sent us flying out of our seats. Every possession that made the entire building tense. Every crowd pop that probably explains why some of us woke up Thursday morning sounding nothing like ourselves.
Especially that three.
That's why I'm glad I was there for this one.
I can look at a box score tomorrow and see 108–100. I can look at the record book years from now and see 45 beside Arike Ogunbowale's name.
But neither one can recreate what College Park Center felt like when that three went in.
Neither one can capture looking around and seeing people screaming, jumping and celebrating with whoever happened to be next to them. Neither one can recreate the sound of a building realizing at the exact same moment that its season wasn't over.
And neither one can explain how much fun it was to watch a team with its season on the line keep finding reasons not to go home.
NOW IT’S US had been staring back at us from every seat before the night even started.
By the final buzzer, thousands of fans were wearing it.
And it didn’t feel like a slogan anymore.
It felt like the game we’d just watched.
Everybody had to give something. Everybody had to keep fighting. And everybody in that building seemed to understand what was at stake.
After 45 minutes of loud, stressful, ridiculous, electric playoff basketball, Dallas got exactly what it needed.
And judging by my voice this morning, I think the rest of us gave the Wings just about everything we had too.
One more game.
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