Dallas Wings trade for 6-foot-7 Olympic star to help Paige Bueckers

Billy Heyen

Dallas Wings trade for 6-foot-7 Olympic star to help Paige Bueckers image

It hasn't been a great start as a team for the Dallas Wings this season, but they made an effort to change that on Saturday.

The Wings announced that they've completed a trade for 6-foot-7 center Li Yueru from Seattle.

Dallas will send a 2026 second-round pick and 2027 third-round pick to the Storm.

Yueru has an intriguing skill set but has never quite broken through in the WNBA after coming over from China.

This season, she has made half of her 3-point attempts while averaging 2.8 points and 1.6 rebounds per game in just about eight minutes per contest.

Her best WNBA season came last year for the Los Angeles Sparks. She averaged five points and four rebounds per game.

Yueru played four professional seasons in China before being taken 35th overall by the Atlanta Dream in 2019. She didn't arrive in the WNBA until 2022 with the Chicago Sky.

She's a star for the Chinese national team. At the Paris Olympics, Yueru averaged 17.7 points and 11.0 rebounds per game. That included a 31-point outing against Spain.

Now, she'll join Dallas in the hopes of providing a boost to the Wings.

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Billy Heyen

Billy Heyen is a freelance writer with The Sporting News. He is a 2019 graduate of Syracuse University who has written about many sports and fantasy sports for The Sporting News. Sports reporting work has also appeared in a number of newspapers, including the Sandusky Register and Rochester Democrat & Chronicle