Alexa Philippou
Multiple Authors
Dallas Wings star Paige Bueckers addressed the buzz surrounding her relationship with teammate Azzi Fudd in an opening statement at Wings media day Monday, saying, “Quite frankly, I believe me and Azzi’s personal relationship is nobody’s business but our own, and what we choose to share is completely up to us.”
Bueckers went public with her relationship with Fudd in July 2025, though the two have not commented on it since last summer. Bueckers and Fudd, both No. 1 recruits out of high school, were teammates at UConn for four years, won a national title together in 2025 and have been close friends since their high school days.
“Me and Azzi have always been the utmost professional,” said Bueckers, whom Dallas selected No. 1 last year and is the reigning WNBA Rookie of the Year. “We’ve always conducted ourselves as such, and we’ve never let anything that happens off the court carry onto the court. That’s what we continue to do.
“Me and Azzi are not new to this. We’ve been doing this for a long time. We have countless reps at it. We have a lot of experience with it, so we will continue to use that experience to show up and be professionals, great teammates, great leaders, the hardest workers, and continue to show up and do our job and help the Dallas Wings win basketball games.”
Bueckers said she only plans on addressing her relationship with Fudd this one time and if they continue to get asked about it, they will refer to this answer or deflect and talk about teammates.
“Azzi Fudd was a No. 1 draft pick because she earned it, and it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with who she is as a human being, who she is a basketball player, her resilience, her strength and her career-best year at UConn,” Bueckers continued. “So, Azzi is her own great individual person, and she should be celebrated as such.”
The Wings selected Fudd No. 1 overall in this month’s college draft following her first-team All-American campaign for the Huskies. She was asked about her relationship with Bueckers during her introductory news conference on April 16 before Wings PR intervened to say they would not have players comment on their personal lives.
In an interview with Dallas’ ABC affiliate, WFAA, Fudd later described being reunited with Bueckers as, “so special. Here I am, no control in where I get drafted, and I get to play with my best friend again. So it really is special,” adding they will benefit from having established chemistry in how to play with and off each other.
Wings general manager Curt Miller previously said that while evaluating this draft class all over the world, “it always came back to Azzi.” The 5-foot-11 guard averaged 17.3 points and managed a 45% clip from the 3-point arc as a senior at UConn and should provide some much-needed perimeter shooting for Dallas.
“Words that we heard over and over again in the investigation of her was, a winner, competitor, a hard worker,” Miller said about Fudd. “Obviously the skill set speaks for itself, an incredible shooter — probably one of the quickest releases in the game today, a defender with a lot of competitiveness and toughness, and, ultimately, all the intangibles that goes along with Azzi in the locker room — being unselfish, being an incredible teammate, being a high-basketball-IQ player. [It] all pointed us through a very deliberate and thorough process back to Azzi Fudd.”
The Wings kick off their season May 9 against the Indiana Fever in a matchup between the last four No. 1 overall picks.
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