DALLAS (AP) — Arike Ogunbowale scored a season-high 32 points, Jessica Shepard added a career-best 26 and the Dallas Wings beat Indiana 91-85 on Thursday night, ending the Fever's five-game winning streak.
Caitlin Clark had 10 points and nine assists and Paige Bueckers finished with 13 points and eight assists on a rough shooting night for both former No. 1 overall picks six days after each scored 29 in the Fever's 98-87 victory.
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Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) goes up to shoot against Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers (5) during the first half of a WNBA basketball game in Dallas, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Dallas Wings forward Jessica Shepard (32) tries to dribble past Indiana Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell (0) during the first half of a WNBA basketball game in Dallas, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Dallas Wings forward Jessica Shepard drives with the ball during the first half of a WNBA basketball game against the Indiana Fever in Dallas, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers, right, drives against Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark, left, during the first half of a WNBA basketball game in Dallas, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
They combined to go 9 of 31 from the field two weeks before their expected debut — alongside Indiana forward Aliyah Boston — on the senior U.S. women's national team at the FIBA World Cup.
Kelsey Mitchell tied her season high with 37 points, getting 21 before halftime to set the WNBA record with her 21st consecutive game with at least 20 points. Mitchell, who topped the previous mark of Las Vegas Aces star A'ja Wilson, was 4 of 7 from 3-point range and made all 15 of her free throws.
Awak Kuier had 11 points, eight rebounds and a career-high seven blocks as the Wings won for just the fourth time in 12 games since a six-game winning streak that was their longest since moving to Texas 10 years ago.
The needed boost for Dallas came at the sold out home of the Dallas Mavericks. While there were plenty of Fever fans wearing Clark's familiar No. 22, the home team had the backing of Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban in a courtside seat and 2025 No. 1 overall pick and reigning NBA Rookie of the Year Cooper Flagg in a suite.
Kuier had five blocks before halftime to tie her previous best from 2021, when the native of Egpyt was a 20-year-old rookie.
The Wings had matched their biggest lead of five when they started the fourth quarter with Bueckers on the bench.
Shepard, who had eight rebounds and four assists, and Alysha Clark scored before Clark hit a 3-pointer. After Odyssey Sims hit two free throws and Bueckers returned, Bueckers hit a jumper for Dallas' first 10-point lead at 74-64.
The Fever missed their first chance to set a franchise record for victories, holding at last year's total of 24.
It was the first game for the Wings since they announced that this year's No. 1 overall pick, Azzi Fudd, will miss the rest of the season to undergo arthroscopic surgery on her ailing right knee.
Mitchell hit the 20-point mark with a layup off an inbound play that started with just 5.4 seconds left in the first half after Bueckers and Clark got tangled up with Bueckers trying to foul her new USA Basketball teammate on purpose.
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Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) goes up to shoot against Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers (5) during the first half of a WNBA basketball game in Dallas, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Dallas Wings forward Jessica Shepard (32) tries to dribble past Indiana Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell (0) during the first half of a WNBA basketball game in Dallas, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Dallas Wings forward Jessica Shepard drives with the ball during the first half of a WNBA basketball game against the Indiana Fever in Dallas, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers, right, drives against Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark, left, during the first half of a WNBA basketball game in Dallas, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump appeared Thursday on his former fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen's radio show, holding a stunning public reunion with the man who once called him a “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain” and testified against him both in court and before Congress.
For Cohen, who served prison time for his role in what he said was covering up Trump’s “dirty deeds,” it was the culmination of a behind-the-scenes detente that would have been impossible to imagine several years ago.
The interview, part of which aired on Cohen's 77 WABC radio program Thursday evening and which will air in full Sunday, was an exceptionally friendly affair, with only passing reference to the men's tumultuous history.
“They weaponized you like nobody's ever been weaponized, like few have been,” Trump told Cohen.
“I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said,” he went on. “That’s a big thing that you did."
In an interview with CNN shortly before the radio interview aired, Cohen said he had resubmitted a pardon application to the White House that had been denied by the previous administration, but had yet to receive any response and planned to follow up Friday.
The truce with Cohen makes him the latest in a long line of Trump loyalists who have had public falling-outs with the president but found themselves back in his good graces. Other recent examples include Elon Musk and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
But the split from Cohen was perhaps the most personal. Cohen once boasted that he would “take a bullet” for the president and was by Trump’s side during his political rise. After their public breakup, Cohen’s testimony in Trump’s 2024 criminal hush-money trial instead helped secure Trump’s criminal conviction just as he was trying to make his political comeback.
Cohen has since criticized prosecutors in the case — an admission that paved the way for their reconciliation.
Cohen has said he and the president have had multiple conversations over the past year and introduced the interview by explaining his decision to move on.
“Forgiveness does not mean amnesia. It does not mean that the past did not happen. It does not mean the scars vanish, that the pain was fake or that I have forgotten a single second of what transpired, I have not. Forgiveness isn’t about erasing history," he said. “It is about having the courage to decide that yesterday will no longer dictate tomorrow.”
He sounded nostalgic about a time when he was one of Trump's most trusted aides.
“Boss, remember when I was by your side,” he said at one point.
The clip was introduced with the 1975 War song, “Why Can’t We Be Friends,” and closed with the lyrics, “Reunited and it feels so good,” from the 1978 Peaches & Herb song.
In a long post on his online newsletter Thursday promoting the interview, Cohen said that although his relationship with Trump became “political blood sport,” there were 15 years of close friendship between them.
“The good times don’t cease to have existed because the bad times came afterward,” Cohen wrote.
Simply, he said, “We forgave.”
Trump had made no warm public statements about Cohen before Thursday, but in a series of social media posts this year, he linked to some of his former lawyer’s comments saying he felt pressured by prosecutors to testify against Trump in the criminal hush money case and a civil fraud case.
In 2024, Cohen was the star witness in Trump's criminal hush money trial, which resulted in a 34-count felony conviction. He ended up facing no punishment.
But over days of probing questioning by prosecutors, followed by bruising cross-examination, Cohen placed the then-Republican candidate at the center of schemes during the 2016 presidential election to stifle accounts from an adult film actor and former Playboy model who said they had sexual encounters with Trump.
Cohen testified that Trump promised to reimburse the lawyer for the money he fronted and that he was constantly updated on behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.
“What I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Cohen testified.
Cohen’s testimony at the time appeared to be the final breach in a once-close relationship between the lawyer and his client that was tested in dramatic fashion in 2018 when FBI agents searched Cohen’s office, home and hotel room.
Cohen later pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a Trump Tower project in Russia as well as to campaign finance violations in which he implicated Trump in payments that went to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal. He was sentenced to three years in prison.
Since his trial testimony, though, Cohen has sung a different tune as he’s moved closer to Trump, insisting that he had testified under duress.
“I felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump,” he wrote in a Substack post in January.
Cohen testified before Congress in 2019, alleging Trump had a history of misrepresenting the value of assets to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits.
He gave similar testimony in a 2023 civil fraud trial in New York, which found that Trump and his companies had engaged in fraud by exaggerating his wealth for decades. A New York appeals court later threw out a $550 million judgment against Trump in that case. Trump has asked a court to overturn the remaining parts of the case.
In his tell-all memoir in 2020, “Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump,” Cohen was unsparing, calling Trump an “organized crime don” and “master manipulator.”
But, foreshadowing their later rapprochement, Cohen also wrote that he still cared for Trump, writing, “I had and still have a lot of affection for him.”
FILE - Michael Cohen speaks during a news conference announcing his new radio show in New York, July 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
FILE - Michael Cohen speaks during a news conference announcing his new radio show in New York, July 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
