.png)
5 hours ago
1
Paige Bueckers has said her relationship with her new Dallas Wings teammate Azzi Fudd “is nobody’s business but our own”.
Bueckers and Fudd were college teammates at UConn and were reunited when the Wings chose Fudd with the No 1 overall pick in this year’s WNBA draft. The pair confirmed they were dating last year, but have offered few details of their relationship since and it is uncertain if they are still even together.
At a press conference on Monday, Bueckers made an opening statement during which she addressed speculation about her relationship with Fudd.
“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,” she said.
Bueckers and Fudd have been friends since they were teenagers and played together for four years at UConn, where they won a national title together. Bueckers said the pair are used to media attention.
“Me and Azzi have always been the utmost professional,” said Bueckers, who the Wings selected with the No 1 pick in the 2025 draft. “We’ve always conducted ourselves as such, and we’ve never let anything that happens off the court carry on to 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 would not talk about her relationship with Fudd again. She also played down talk that she had influenced the Wings’ decision to draft Fudd.
“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 said. “So, Azzi is her own great individual person, and she should be celebrated as such.”
After she was drafted, Fudd told Dallas’ ABC affiliate, WFAA that she was happy to be on the same team as Bueckers, who was named WNBA’s rookie of the year last season.
“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,” she said.
Wings general manager Curt Miller has said Fudd was selected on merit alone.
“Words that we heard over and over again in the investigation of her was, a winner, competitor, a hard worker,” Miller said about the decision to draft 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 WNBA season starts on 8 May, and the Wings play their first game on 9 May, against Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever.
