The Dallas Wings could have Fudded around and found out what passing on Azzi Fudd at No. 1 in the 2026 WNBA Draft would have meant for their fortunes. But they didn’t.
Their decision gives Fudd what she wants.
Yes, a return home to DC to play for the Washington Mystics would have been meaningful. But by going to Dallas, she doesn’t have to be in a long-distance romantic relationship. No. She gets to play alongside her significant other, and her UConn backcourt mate of four years, Paige Bueckers.
Basketball started on Day 1 for Fudd … because it’s in her name.
Her mother, then Katie Smrcka-Duffy, began her college basketball career at NC State the same year (1996) that Team USA women’s basketball famously dominated their way to the Olympic gold medal that gave birth to the WNBA. Six years later, Smrcka-Duffy gave birth to her daughter and named her after one of the 1996 team’s players: Jennifer Azzi.
Azzi was the NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player for Stanford’s 1990 championship team and finished her five-year WNBA career shooting 45.8 percent from 3 with 158 makes. Fudd lived up to her name by winning MOP for UConn’s 2025 title squad.
As for that second part about being a lights-out sniper? It would only be fitting if Fudd were to become that elite of a shooter in the W. What we know now is that she has perfect form and incredible work ethic, and shot 42.2 percent with 292 makes in college. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.
If you were to go back in time to Feb. 25, 2021 and tell women’s basketball fans that Azzi Fudd is going to get drafted No. 1 overall in the WNBA Draft, they would assume that it is going to be achieved on the heels of a college career for the ages. That day, ESPN published a story by Katie Barnes that called Fudd “by most accounts, the best high school talent the game has seen in decades.”
She was more hyped out of high school than Bueckers was the year before, and that is saying a whole lot. She was the first sophomore to win National Gatorade Player of the Year. She was, quite simply, a legend in the making.
She overcame the adversity of a torn ACL and MCL so well in high school that ESPN called her “unbreakable.” But more adversity hit in college and sidetracked the growing legend who we saw embrace commissioner Cathy Engelbert before anyone else did on Monday night.
Injuries limited Fudd to 115 career college games across five years. She’s not a 2,000-point scorer. She averaged just 14.7 for her career (outside UConn’s top 10, while Bueckers leads with 19.8).
But perhaps she is unbreakable. She tore the same ACL, as well as her medial meniscus in the same knee, in November of 2023, and still wound up being close to the best player in the country by the time her days in Storrs were over.
First, her MOP run in the 2025 tourney culminated in the most important thing: a championship. (She was able to get the monkey off her best friend’s back, as it was Bueckers’ lone title.) Then, while she came up short of a second ring, she became a First Team All-American in 2026 and teamed up with Sarah Strong to lead the Huskies back to the Final Four.
Yes, this time around, she is less-hyped than Bueckers, as Paige was seen as a sure-fire superstar when she was drafted No. 1 last year. The jury is still out on Fudd’s ceiling in the W. But Monday marked a fresh start and a chance to see just how high she can still soar. It helps when that fresh start comes at No. 1, even if another team with a different and glaring need would have taken Olivia Miles or Awa Fam. Going No. 1 is a little something to celebrate.
And Fudd didn’t get picked at No. 1 by just any team. She’s now going to be with the one person best suited to motivate her into becoming the legendary version of herself: Bueckers.
Fudd and Bueckers met in 2017 as members of Team USA’s U16 team. They were close friends through Fudd’s first ACL tear, with Bueckers actually being present, as she on the bench of the opposing team, when it happened. Bueckers then was key in recruiting Fudd to UConn. They revealed they are dating last July.
General manager Curt Miller was famously seen jumping up and down in excitement when his Wings won the No. 1 pick in the 2025 Draft Lottery because he knew it meant they would get Bueckers. Bueckers went on to win Rookie of the Year, and was also an All-Star starter and top-10 MVP candidate for much of the season, confirming that she is indeed the future in Dallas.
Miller reunited Bueckers with Fudd, and perhaps the personal connection, which is indeed important to winning, played a role. But it was also a good basketball decision. As a shooter, Fudd fits well with any team, and her already-established on-court chemistry with Bueckers is phenomenal.
Fudd becomes the first No. 1 draft pick to benefit from the new CBA. She will make $500,000 this year, which is night and day from what Bueckers made last year ($78,831). That, in and of itself, is a feel-good story.
Meanwhile, Alanna Smith, Arike Ogunbowale and Jessica Shepard are Dallas’ million-dollar women, assumed to be part of the team’s core, along with Bueckers and Fudd. Ogunbowale at her best is an All-Star; she’s even received MVP voting points in six of seven seasons. Smith and Shepard have star potential themselves, which is why the Wings have invested so much in them. Overall, the future has gotten a lot brighter for the Wings.
Fudd is back to what she knows: being No. 1. Just like UConn fans had a lot to look forward to in 2021, Wings fans can’t wait to see what she does next.
Dallas, The People’s Princess has arrived.
