Sports

Dallas Wings star gives her ‘only’ statement on relationship with teammate

Don’t expect to hear much more from the Dallas Wings’ Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd about their romantic relationship.

Bueckers, the reigning WNBA Rookie of the Year, used the Wings’ media day to address questions about her relationship with Fudd, her former UConn teammate and fellow back-to-back No. 1 draft pick.

When Fudd was introduced in Dallas-Fort Worth after her selection, Wings public relations intervened to decline a question to Fudd about her publicly acknowledged relationship with Bueckers.

Before her individual press conference Monday, Bueckers gave what she said would in effect be her final word on her personal life.

“There is something that I wanted to address, and I only plan on addressing it once,” she told reporters. “So if 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.

“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. But as media members I understand you guys have a job to do and you guys have to ask questions about the basketball aspect of it, so that’s what I will be addressing today.

“Me and Azzi have always been the utmost professional. 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’ll continue to do. And I’m not entirely sure if this is new to media members, to social media, to new people who are watching the WNBA or women’s basketball in general, but 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 continued by denying that she influenced the Wings to take Fudd with the No. 1 pick.

“To add onto that, Azzi Fudd was the No. 1 draft pick because she earned it. 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, her resilience, her strength and her career-best year at UConn. Azzi is her own great individual person, and she should be celebrated as such.

“And now that we’ve got that out of the way, I would love to talk basketball.”

The Wings open the preseason at Indiana at 6 p.m. Thursday, then return there for the season opener against Caitlin Clark and the Fever at noon May 9.


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This story was originally published April 27, 2026 at 5:03 PM.

Jim Barnes
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Jim Barnes is the Star-Telegram’s sports editor. A Fort Worth native and graduate of Castleberry High School, he returned to Texas after 13 years at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He previously was sports editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald and a freelance high school sports reporter for The Dallas Morning News.
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