Commentary: Addition of Azzi Fudd could make Wings must watch team

I suppose it's a bit early to refer to Dallas Wings general manager Curt Miller as the Howie Roseman of the WNBA. After all, in a 13-team league in 2025, Dallas tied for the 12th-best record. So no one is calling this rebuild complete, although the optimism at Wings media day seems as reasonable as it can be for a team coming off a 10-34 season. In 2022 and 2023, Roseman started retooling the Philadelphia Eagles' defense with players from Georgia's national championship teams. Not every pick was a home run, but first-round tackles Jordan Davis and Jalen Carter played outsized roles in the 2024 Super Bowl season and the Eagles' repeat as NFC East champions last year. If you want to copy that, WNBA style, what could be better than loading up on UConn's backcourt? Paige Bueckers won the WNBA Rookie of the Year award last season and, blessed with the first overall pick again this spring, the Wings added Azzi Fudd. On Monday, Bueckers opened with a statement that she and Fudd would not be discussing their personal relationship in the future, and that they had always been professional in how they handled things on and off the court. If all goes as Miller has planned, the interest in the Bueckers-Fudd relationship will soon enough be focused on how the Wings assembled the best guard pair in the WNBA. "You look around at the success of UConn players in our league, what we say all the time is that they know how to play the right way," said Miller, who was twice WNBA Coach of the Year with the Connecticut Sun. "They know the non-negotiables in our locker room, that you don't coach effort, you don't teach effort. Just really, really excited about our young pieces that we continue to build with." The league, hoping to hit a home run off its new media deal and new CBA, much of it a reflection of the unprecedented interest that the Indiana Fever's Caitlin Clark has sparked, shares Miller's excitement about the Wings. Despite last year's dreadful record which forced yet another coaching change — Jose Fernandez is the team's sixth full-time coach in 10 seasons — NBC Sports' press release announcing its return to the league mentions eight players. Bueckers is the third star on the list and Fudd is the eighth. Of the 22 regular-season games scheduled for NBC and its offshoots, the Wings appear in four of them including a Week 2 appearance at Brooklyn's Barclays Center against the New York Liberty. It appears NBC isn't looking for a Dallas' return to last place in the Western Conference any more than Miller, who hopes to have made as many key additions in free agency as he did in landing Fudd with the first pick. "There was an intent this year to add veterans in the locker room which we were successful in doing," Miller said. The focus was on post players, and Miller said it became clear rather quickly that teams were doing all they could to retain their centers and power forwards with new contracts. "You got really quickly to Jessica Shepard and Alanna Smith as players that might be willing to move, and for us to land both of them was a huge free agency get for the team," he said. The 6-4 Smith from Stanford was the league's Co-Defensive Player of the Year in 2025. Shepard had the fastest triple-double in WNBA history last season, recording one in 21 minutes, 57 seconds against the Fever. She's one of three Wings to win championships overseas this offseason (that includes All-Star guard Arike Ogunbowale in China), so the team is just getting back together as the preseason starts Thursday in preparation for a season opener May 9 at Indiana. Fudd said the speed, the intensity, the physical nature of the team's first few practices is the most noticeable indicator that, even having won Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four in 2025 for the Huskies, she has moved up a level. "This is obviously the next step, but I think it will be a big jump," Fudd said. "Being with a different coach, new organization, different players, I think it's going to be a bit of learning, a bit of growing, and I really look forward to that." Expect her to grow quickly. As Bueckers, clearly more muscular in preparations for Year Two, said, "Azzi Fudd was the No. 1 draft pick because she earned it, and it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with who she is as a human being, who she is as a basketball player." Basketball fans in the area should be pumped. The Mavericks aren't likely to win another lottery and put back-to-back Rookies of the Year at the base of their foundation. The Wings, still toiling at UT-Arlington but bound for Dallas at an undetermined date in the near future, might do exactly that.