Today the women’s basketball community experienced a swell of heartbreak, potentially entering all seven stages of grief simultaneously, when Azzi Fudd and Paige Bueckers informed the world on Azzi’s podcast, Fudd Around and Find Out, that they have in fact been broken up for over a year:
Azzi: We are no longer together. I don’t know how else to say that.
Paige: I mean, yeah, we’re not together anymore. It’s been for everybody wondering — even though we don’t have to share — it’s been a while, like over a year. Everybody’s gonna be like, oh my gosh they’re teammates how is this gonna work? We were not together before we got drafted, so all those narratives can go to bed, she was not drafted because she was my girlfriend, she was drafted because she deserved it, she’s an amazing human, amazing basketball, and we’re still friends, we’re still cool, we broke up over a year ago so we played an entire season together, we’re utmost professional, we care about basketball. And we’re still friends, we’re still cool.
Azzi: We know you guys probably have a ton of questions but we’ve addressed everything that we need to and the rest will stay with us.
Paige went on to say that they’ve apparently seen a lot of negativity and hate directed at their family and friends in an attempt to defend or protect Paige and Azzi’s relationship, and they’d like people to stop doing that.
“There’s been some crazy things said about us,” Paige said, continuing, “Sometimes in life there’s just seasons, and sometimes in life two people are just at different points of their life. We still support each other, we’re still gonna be great friends and teammates, we’re professionals. We’re still gonna have other friends, we will eventually move on, we will — I know we will continue to be outside and be lit and have a good time, so we should not get punished for that as well.”
Azzi added, “Also we don’t need messages about what the other person is dong!”
Paige and Azzi’s relationship began while the two were playing at UConn, and through Paige’s first year in the WNBA. In June of 2025, they officially went public with their union. It was an easy relationship to care about. They were two charming, funny athletes at the very top of their game and, quite simply, the way that they looked at each other, as captured in a multitude of fan edits, was really something. While professional sports couples are nothing new to the world of women’s athletics, there was still plenty unprecedented about Paige and Azzi, including (we thought at the time) two subsequent WNBA #1 draft picks being in a relationship with each other. Iconic!
For the past year, hopeful #Pazzi fans have believed that Paige and Azzi’s public distance from one another — taking separate vacations, Paige not sitting at Azzi’s table for the WNBA draft, the two cavorting individually at All-Star Weekend, not arriving at games together or posting casual photos together on social media — was an attempt to shield themselves from extremely intense para-social attention. Alas, it turns out that the more obvious explanation was the real one – they had broken up.
As the 2026 WNBA season began, with Azzi freshly drafted to the Wings, Paige and Azzi both were asked questions about the status of their relationship not just by fans, but by the press as well. Thus, in an early-season press conference, Paige told reporters that her and Azzi’s “personal relationship is nobody’s business but our own” and they’d choose what they wanted to share. Furthermore, she reminded everyone that “we’ve been doing this for a long time. We have countless reps at it. We have a lot of experience at 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.”
As any women’s sports fan could’ve told you — team building and WNBA draft decisions are never made around who is dating who and no relationship starting or ending has ever interfered with a player’s ability to perform on the court.
The two went on to participate in what was a massive turnaround season for the Wings. In August, Azzi Fudd was ruled out for the remainder of the season due to persistent soreness in her right knee and planned surgery. Still, the Wings made it to the playoffs and gave the (eventually championship) Valkyries a fierce battle in the first round. Wings fans (me) have high hopes for the 2027 season.
At the end of the day, it’s important to note that this announcement came a little bit after the midterm elections, which ended up working out because Texas, at least, was already feeling a little blue.
See the full podcast episode here:
Comments
hearing you’re a wings fans is very disappointing Riese