By R.L. Bynum
Deja Kelly’s professional basketball journey has put her on a WNBA roster.
The Dallas Wings signed the former UNC and Oregon guard to a developmental player contract, the team announced Tuesday. She hasn’t been in the WNBA since being cut in the 2025 preseason by the Las Vegas Aces. Kelly has signed to play for Panthers WBC Kavala in Greece this fall.
Kelly, a native of nearby Duncanville, Texas, will wear No. 2 for the Wings. Last week, former UNC center Maria Gakdeng signed a similar contract with the Toronto Tempo.
Under the 2026 collective bargaining agreement, developmental players can practice and travel with the team and are eligible to be active for a set number of regular-season games, with teams retaining reserved rights to up to two players who finished the prior season on a player development contract.
Each developmental player may be activated for up to 12 games this season, with teams limited to 24 total developmental activations across the season.
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The signing comes as the Wings close out their regular season. Dallas sits at 26–17, tied with the New York Liberty for seventh in the WNBA standings, and closes out the regular season against the Seattle Storm on Tuesday night before the playoffs start.
Kelly arrives fresh off a championship run in a new professional league. She recently led the Charlotte Crown to the title in the inaugural season of the Upshot League, capping the run with a comeback win over the Jacksonville Waves on Aug. 29 in which Charlotte erased a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to win 81-76.
Kelly finished that game with 29 points, six rebounds, three assists and two steals, and Upshot League commissioner Donna Orender presented her with the Ann Meyers Drysdale MVP award afterward.
Over the 2026 Upshot League season, Kelly averaged league highs of 18.1 points and 4.0 assists per game. That production followed a college career that made her one of the most prolific scorers in UNC history.
Kelly spent her first four seasons at Carolina, where she left ranked No. 8 on the program’s all-time scoring list with 1,858 points, and helped the Tar Heels reach four straight NCAA Tournaments, including a Sweet 16 appearance in 2022.
She spent her final collegiate season as a graduate student at Oregon in 2024–25, where she averaged 12.2 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.3 assists while helping the Ducks to a 20-12 record and the second round of the 2025 NCAA Tournament. Kelly finished her college career with 2,247 points in 153 games.
Kelly went undrafted in 2025, but she signed a training camp contract with the Las Vegas Aces that April. She played just over seven minutes against Dallas in the preseason on May 2, scoring nine points on 4-of-5 shooting, and four days later she scored 15 points and hit the game-winning basket in an 85–84 exhibition win over Phoenix.
The Aces waived Kelly before the regular season began, sending her career in a different direction for a year. She played for Athletes Unlimited in Nashville the following winter rather than immediately landing on a WNBA roster.
Her persistence carried her through the Upshot League title run and, eventually, back into WNBA circles. The connection to Dallas traces back further than this week’s signing.
During the 2024 Paris Olympics, Oregon coach Kelly Graves said he spoke with Curt Miller, the Wings’ general manager at the time, about Kelly’s WNBA prospects, according to Andscape.
Photo courtesy of Upshot League
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