The Dallas Wings selected point guard Azzi Fudd out of the University of UConn with the first overall pick of the 2026 WNBA draft. While not a consensus first overall pick, Fudd was a First-Team All-American in her senior season with the Huskies and won the national championship in 2025 alongside Dallas\u2019 first overall pick from a season ago, Paige Bueckers.<\/p>\n
Despite her accomplished career in Storrs, CT, there was speculation that the Wings selected Fudd in part because of her relationship with Bueckers, which the pair publicly announced on TikTok last year.<\/p>\n
Fudd was asked about the dynamic at her introductory press conference, but Wings PR interjected,<\/a> saying the franchise would not address its players\u2019 personal lives. Bueckers finally addressed the relationship<\/a> during the Wings\u2019 media day, but made it clear she didn\u2019t intend to do so again.<\/p>\n \u201cQuite frankly, I believe me and Azzi\u2019s personal relationship is nobody\u2019s business but our own. And what we choose to share is completely up to us,\u201d Bueckers stated. \u201cWe\u2019ve never let anything that happens off the court carry onto the court, and that\u2019s what we\u2019ll continue to do.\u201d<\/p>\n On Thursday, former WNBA player and CBS Sports analyst Renee Montgomery<\/a> spoke about the topic alongside comedian Sarah Tiana and reporter Suzy Shuster on Women\u2019s Sports Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n Montgomery offered her take on how Fudd and Bueckers could appease the public\u2019s curiosity while staying in control of the narrative.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d 100% do a Vogue collab together, drop 73 Questions on Vogue, answer all the questions that humans might want to ask, and just answer them then in a high-fashion, dope way, and drop the mic on it,\u201d Montgomery said.<\/p>\n \ufeff<\/p>\n Tiana, a co-host of the show alongside Montgomery, spoke about professional sports leagues as entertainment products and how she feels the pair\u2019s relationship is perfectly viable to cover throughout the season, comparing it to the hypothetical buzz there\u2019d be around a relationship between Lakers teammates LeBron James and Luka Don\u010di\u0107.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, but I also think that the WNBA, like all sports, is a TV show. Like we\u2019re all invested,\u201d Tiana said. \u201cWe want some drama. We wanna know\u2026 \u00a0I do think that there, there is an element where it\u2019s like, I know that this is basketball and I know that you guys, you know, are in a relationship. But like, if LeBron and Luka were dating, it\u2019d be like, yeah, we\u2019re probably going to ask you about that. Like, Luka, uh, how\u2019d you get hurt? Did something happen at home?\u201d<\/p>\n Shuster acknowledged that the relationship could indeed influence how things play out on the court, which would make its coverage the responsibility of reporters.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve lived outside of a locker room for three years. And your job is to report what\u2019s happening in there. And I think at some point, at some point, people are wondering, okay, well, how do you keep things professional if there\u2019s an issue? If you guys have an issue in your relationship, how does it not carry over into how you play on the court?\u201d<\/p>\n While it\u2019s clear that Dallas plans to let them decline to comment moving forward, it\u2019s almost inevitable that questions about the relationship will arise again, especially if Dallas struggles, as teams picking first overall tend to do.\u00a0 Media members have an obligation to report accurately on what may be influencing on-court dynamics, and the WNBA wants as many eyes on its product as possible, which could all culminate in a scenario where Fudd, Bueckers, and the Wings have to address the topic directly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Wings selected point guard Azzi Fudd out of the University of UConn with the first overall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[28454,49,48,3459,4658,233427,239268,82,99385,630],"class_list":["post-641778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-azzi-fudd","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dallas-wings","tag-paige-bueckers","tag-renee-montgomery","tag-sarah-tiana","tag-sports","tag-suzy-shuster","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}