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Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers addresses her relationship with Azzi Fudd during media day at College Park Center on Monday, April 27, 2026, in Arlington.<\/p>\n
El\u00edas Valverde II\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
ARLINGTON \u2014 Paige\u00a0Bueckers<\/a> had something on her mind and she spoke it.<\/p>\n Ever since the Dallas Wings drafted Azzi Fudd<\/a> No. 1 overall in the 2026 WNBA draft earlier this month, discourse has swirled about Bueckers\u2019 relationship with Fudd<\/a>, along with how media members should handle it in their coverage.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Bueckers, the No. 1 pick in 2025, put that debate to bed Monday in an opening statement to reporters attending Wings media day at College Park Center.<\/p>\n \u201cQuite frankly, I believe me and Azzi\u2019s personal relationship is nobody\u2019s business but our own,\u201d Bueckers said. \u201cAnd what we choose to share is completely up to us.\u201d<\/p>\n Related: Refusing to acknowledge Azzi Fudd, Paige Bueckers relationship feeds an ugly narrative<\/a><\/p>\n Make Dallas News a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Dallas\u2019 decision to draft Fudd, who was tabbed as one of the best players in this year\u2019s draft class more than a year ago, has attracted national attention partly because Bueckers confirmed last summer that she and Fudd were in a relationship. When Dallas Morning News columnist Kevin Sherrington<\/a> asked Fudd at her introductory news conference April 16 about the status of her relationship with\u00a0Bueckers, Wings spokesperson Pam Flenke stepped in.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cI understand why you have to ask that question, but we\u2019re going to respectfully decline from commenting on our players\u2019 personal lives,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The exchange became one of the biggest stories in sports, fueling a debate about what reporters should or shouldn\u2019t ask, along with what coverage of the WNBA should entail.<\/p>\n Bueckers, like Flenke did two weeks ago, acknowledged on Monday the perspective of media members.<\/p>\n Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers addresses her relationship with Azzi Fudd during media day at College Park Center on Monday, April 27, 2026, in Arlington.<\/p>\n El\u00edas Valverde II\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n \u201cI understand you have a job to do and you have to ask questions about the basketball aspect of it, so that\u2019s what I will be addressing today,\u201d Bueckers said in her opening statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cMe and Azzi have always been the utmost professionals. We\u2019ve always conducted ourselves as such. We\u2019ve never let anything that happens off the court carry on to the court, and that\u2019s what we continue to do. I\u2019m not entirely sure if this is new to media members, to social media, to new people who are watching the WNBA or women\u2019s basketball in general, but me and Azzi are not new to this,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n Related: Five takeaways from the first week of Wings training camp<\/a><\/p>\n Bueckers and Fudd won a national championship together at UConn in 2025, with Fudd earning Most Outstanding Player honors at the Final Four that year. In her final season at UConn in 2025-26, Fudd averaged 17.3 points on 48.1% shooting, 2.6 rebounds and 3.1 assists for the 38-1 Huskies who finished in the Final Four.<\/p>\n \u201cAzzi Fudd was the 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 as a basketball player,\u201d Bueckers said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Dallas Wings guards Azzi Fudd (left) and Paige Bueckers talk practice on the team\u2019s opening day of training camp at College Park Center on Sunday, April 19, 2026, in Arlington.<\/p>\n Smiley N. Pool\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n The two back-to-back No. 1 picks are key pieces of a rebuilding franchise<\/a> that has struggled since moving to North Texas in 2016, but could be on the rise with big moves in free agency that included resigning All-Star guard Arike Ogunbowale and adding top talents such as reigning co-defensive player of the year Alanna Smith.<\/p>\n While conversation has circulated about the status of Bueckers and Fudd, relationships between players on the same team have been common in the WNBA. In 2025, the Wings signed DiJonai Carrington and NaLyssa Smith, who were a couple. As a coach and general manager in the WNBA, Wings GM Curt Miller has built a reputation for working with teammates who are also in a relationship.<\/p>\n The high profiles of Bueckers and Fudd have put them under more of a microscope, however.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Related: How will Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd jell on the court? Wings’ timer starts at training camp<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think that you can have the growth in the game that we\u2019ve had without the exposure and the media, so it\u2019s kind of like that double-edged sword, at least for someone like me who doesn\u2019t love the media,\u201d Fudd said earlier Monday in response to a question about the increased attention on the league and its players and how she navigates it.<\/p>\n She added that she\u2019s tried to limit her social media consumption.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t always need to know what people are saying, what they\u2019re talking about, what they\u2019re doing,\u201d Fudd said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use<\/a> and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bueckers, the WNBA Rookie of the Year in 2025, added strength in the offseason and has found her voice as she enters her second professional season. Poised to help the Wings change their trajectory after a 10-34 season last year, Bueckers also wanted to reclaim the narrative.<\/p>\n She shut down any further questions about her relationship with Fudd.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we continue to get asked about it, we will refer to this moment in time or we will use this time to deflect and talk about our teammates,\u201d Bueckers said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers addresses her relationship with Azzi Fudd during media day at College Park Center…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,89478],"class_list":["post-268742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-tp-paige-bueckers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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