The Dallas Wings made Azzi Fudd the #1 overall pick in the 2026 WNBA Draft on Monday despite obvious questions about fit – Fudd is a guard, and the Wings roster already includes four-time All-Star Arike Ogunbowale and last year’s #1 overall pick, Paige Bueckers, the 2025 WNBA Rookie of the Year, at the guard spots.
What the team doesn’t want anybody talking about, and I mean, they really don’t want people talking about this: Fudd and Bueckers are in a romantic relationship.
“I understand why you have to ask that question, but we’re going to respectfully decline from commenting on our players’ personal lives,” a member of the team’s media staff interjected during a post-draft press conference with Fudd on Thursday.
Now, this isn’t “Heated Rivalry,” the HBO Max series about hockey players on rival teams who are in a secret relationship; Bueckers was the one who broke the news of her relationship with Fudd, last year, in a TikTok.
Seems like a legit topic for discussion, not so much for the prurient interest in the private aspects to their relationship, but for the implications for the two as athletes in a team sport.
To that end, the question that got interrupted was an attempt to ask if Fudd and Buecker have “talked to any other couples in the league about how they negotiate that dynamic as pro teammates.”
One for example there: Phoenix Mercury teammates Alyssa Thomas and DeWanna Bonner.
I’d also want to ask the front office if the relationship between Buecker and Fudd factored into the decision to draft Fudd to play in an already crowded backcourt.
Without going into that specifically, Wings GM Curt Miller did address the general thinking behind taking Fudd with the first pick.
“Since the moment we secured the #1 pick, we set out on a plan to be deliberate, thorough, with intention on evaluating where we got to ultimately in picking Azzi Fudd. We traveled all over the world watching this incredible draft class, but it all came back always to Azzi,” Miller said.
Three-guard lineups are not uncommon in this day and age, so, that may not be as big an issue as it could appear.
Still, why the taboo treatment of the relationship aspect?
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Chris Graham
