By Rashad Miller, The Uncool Urban
ARLINGTON, TX – The Dallas Wings haven’t had an ideal season with the team’s record standing at 9-28, but a highlight of this season has been the play of Arike Ogunbowale. The guard out of Notre Dame has had an excellent season averaging 22.6 points per game, making her second behind reigning MVP, A’ja Wilson. She is also averaging 3 three-pointers made per game, tying her with rookie Caitlin Clark, and leads the league in steals with 2.2 steals per game.
The two time WNBA All Star Game MVP can add another accolade to her already impressive résumé; the Dallas Wings’ all-time leading scorer. Ogunbowale would achieve this feat at the 4:27 mark of the fourth quarter when she went to the free throw line. That is where she would score her 3,972nd point, all of them in a Dallas Wings uniform. She is the franchise leader in points, three pointers made, and free throws made; a feat only accomplished by WNBA legend Tamika Catchings in her fifteen seasons with the Indiana Fever and Diana Taurasi, who has played for two decades with the Phoenix Mercury.
In Detroit, when the Wings were known as the Detroit Shock, the all-time record was set at 3,971 by three-time WNBA champion Deanna ‘Tweety’ Nolan, a record that stood for over a decade. Nolan would congratulate Ogunbowale via video saying that “what I did in nine years, you have done in five years” and that it showed how much “the WNBA has evolved and it is only going to get better” with players like her. Nolan would conclude with the classic saying of “records are meant to be broken”.
Ogunbowale would say after the game that breaking the record was “definitely special” and “there’s been a lot of great players” in the twenty-six years of the club.
She would also express gratitude for the words of encouragement and the praise from the previous record holder saying that she loves when “legends and great players from the past give props” and that current players in the WNBA like herself “wouldn’t be where we are without everybody that paved the way”.
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