WNBA mock draft 2025: Which team will pick Paige Bueckers? - ESPN

Caitlin Clark was the wire-to-wire top pick in ESPN's 2024 WNBA mock draft. UConn's Paige Bueckers might be in the same position for 2025.

For ESPN's initial WNBA mock draft for 2025, the order of picks has not been established. The lottery teams in order of odds for the No. 1 pick are: the Los Angeles Sparks, Dallas Wings, Chicago Sky and Washington Mystics. Until the draft lottery is held — likely in December — to set the official order, we will list them in this order.

Keep in mind that Dallas owns a pick swap with Chicago via the 2023 Marina Mabrey trade. So if the Sky place higher than the Wings in the lottery, they will switch spots.

Also, the Golden State Valkyries will join the league in 2025 as its 13th team. The WNBA has not announced details of the expansion draft or where the Valkyries will be slotted in the regular draft, which is traditionally in April.

For now, we slot Golden State at No. 5, just after the lottery picks. The last two WNBA expansion teams, Chicago in 2006 and the Atlanta Dream in 2008, drafted No. 6 and No. 8 in the first round, respectively. (The Dream initially were given the No. 4 pick in their first draft but traded it for a veteran player and the No. 8 pick.)

Lastly, we will list 12 first-round picks, since the WNBA stripped the Aces' 2025 first-round selection as a penalty after the investigation involving former Aces player Dearica Hamby's allegations against the team.

If Bueckers is the first selection in 2025, it will mark just the second time guards have been selected No. 1 in the WNBA draft in consecutive years. It previously happened in 2019 (Notre Dame's Jackie Young to Las Vegas) and 2020 (Oregon's Sabrina Ionescu to the New York Liberty).

Clark was the projected first pick