The WNBA Fumbled Their Azzi Fudd-Paige Bueckers Response

I gotta ask you one more thing, and this is a bit of a pivot.

This is about the WNBA because The WNBA just fascinates me.

It, it fascinates me.

Um, on Wednesday, the Dallas Wings introduced the number one overall pick, uh, AZ Fudd.

Fudd, who is, uh, joining a team that is led by Paige Beckers, who is Fudd's former college teammate, who also happens to be her girlfriend.

This is not a relationship that either one of them have been hiding.

They've been public about it for over a year now.

Uh, this is In my opinion, and the opinion of many others, a genuine basketball story that should be covered as such.

So it was no surprise that a reporter at the press conference asked about it.

Take a listen.

Hay, Kevin Sherrington, the Dallas Morning News, uh, Page announced last year on TikTok that y'all were a couple, and I'm wondering.

If, if that is still the case, and if so, if y'all have talked to any other couples in the league about how they negotiate that dynamic as pro teammates.

I understand why you have to ask that question, but we're gonna respectfully decline from commenting on our players' personal lives.

The next question.

All right, so let me preface.

My comments here, ET by saying, I, I love the WNBA.

I really do.

I enjoy the product.

Um, I don't have a daughter, but if I do, one of the first things that I will do when she is old enough to buy, when she's old enough is to buy WNBA season tickets because I want, uh, my daughter watching and looking up to these women.

Uh, but these women are being led by the most amateur operation in professional sports.

The, the WNBA and its players are having a moment right now.

The Caitlin Clark fueled moment.

Um, what the league has shown is that it is not ready for that moment.

It has handled the rise of Caitlin Clark incredibly poorly.

There was The comment that WNBA commissioner Kathy Engelbert made, uh, about Clark last year, allegedly made, I guess, saying she was lucky to have the platform that the WNBA provided like that matters.

Uh, you have Engelbert whose job security has been the subject of months of speculation, so much so that Adam Silver actually had to comment on it.

Uh, very recently, um, she was asked, asking a reporter, Cathy, who had asked her if she would have asked that question about her job security of a man says that comment.

Now, now hold on, now you have the wings here.

You have the wings refusing to allow Fudd to answer a question that everybody has been talking about since the draft.

Now the WNBA.

They're just not ready for this moment, man.

The people working in it are not ready for it.

Like, do they think this is an unfair question?

Like, flip the script for me here.

The two stars of a professional team are in a relationship.

Of course, it is a fair question.

I mean, I don't care about their sexuality.

If it was two dudes on an NBA team, I would have the exact same questions.

Like, how is it going to work?

Are teammates going to be OK with it?

What happens if like, with 90% of all 20-somethings , they break up?

What happens then?

The wings, the wings in refusing to allow AZ Fudd to answer this question, which I'm sure.

He was prepared to do.

They just made this topic 100 times bigger by not allowing Fudd to offer a benign answer to what I thought was a very reasonable question.

It just shows that they are not ready for this type of scrutiny.

They are not ready for this type of tension.

What did you think of how this all played out this week?

Yeah, I just thought it was odd because, uh, you know, like you said prior to, they haven't been hiding this relationship, you know, and they've been very, very tight.

I think people have fell in love with this relationship as well, you know what I mean?

And when it comes down to it, just, and realistically in the real world, you can't hide anything.

You know what I mean?

Nothing's very private and you being like, hey, we're not going to answer his question is not going to further subtract light from it.

And I just thought it was kind of like, hey, you're in the big leagues now.

Like, you know, the more real you get, the more unreal it gets.

And I'm not even talking to AZ Fudd, I'm talking to our sisters and You know, the league of the WNBA, like, hey, this is where it comes to big time sports where people are gonna try to figure out not only what like what you like to do, what you don't like to do, what's going on in your off life.

Like you went from being, not saying you've always been elite, but you're, you're role models.

People are looking up to you, people are starting, starting to use your life to get away from their own life and dive into what's going on.

This is part of the gig.

Like you could say I want to keep it as private as I want, but that's just not how the world goes, and I think, uh, being naive to it is, is just being unrealistic and, and, and hopefully they have it handled internally just in case those problems do come up because when you do sit there, you don't, like you said, like in your twenties, people break up.

Like bad things happen.

Like, when you break up, what's the hardest thing gonna be having to see, be in the same backcourt.

As your teammate daily, and I don't think they'll break up.

I think they have a great relationship, a great bond, but I think everybody breaks up in their twenties.

Everybody, everybody, the number of, the number of love stories that happen when you're in your teens and the twenties, I mean, get out of here.

Get out of here.

This isn't a hopeless romantic.

00, sure, I'm, I'm, I'm not , I believe, I believe, I'm not even talking specifically about these two.

I'm talking about generally speaking, people in their twenties breaks up.

You just, you just do.

You go.

You become different people.

You go different ways.

Things happen like that.

Uh, more to the point, like, I'm not even looking that far ahead.

I just, I, I'm flummoxed by how poorly the Dallas Wings handled that, that the decision, the decision they made, which was a conscious decision, was to deny AZ Fudd the chance to answer that question.

Do they think this is now going to go away?

Do they think that when this team goes on the road or goes into training camp, other people are not going to ask this question?

All they did was mushroom this story.

All they did was make it that much bigger.

And to all the people out there.

And saying like it's none of your business.

I don't care about their personal life.

This is a basketball story.

You've got Azie Fudd, and I'm not a WNBA expert, but you've got Azie Fudd, who was not the consensus number one overall draft pick from everything I've read.

There were other women in this mix, and you're choosing to draft her.

So like, he, I'd wanna know like if I was covering this, I'd wanna know the answer to the question the guy at the Dallas Morning News asked, which is a very reasonable question.

He wasn't acting like a dick asking the question.

He was like, how do you plan to kind of navigate this and have you talk to other women.

have been in similar situations, a perfectly reasonable question, but I would want to know like the TikTok of what went on in the front office.

Were people at all leery of it?

Do they have conversations about it?

Cause I'm sure they did.

And if they didn't, they should all be fired because they're terrible at their jobs.

Like this, this is a real story and deserves to be covered as such.

And what the Dallas Wings did was make it an even bigger story and really embarrassed their player by saying that like this player is not mature enough to answer the question like that, that she was asked this week.

And, and you even look, you switch it over, um, what's my young man's name from Oklahoma City, Cason Wallace, he dates Kiki Rice, like, That's, I mean, obviously it's not as serious as uh dating a teammate, but it's been in conversation.

These are still things you have to come up with.

You dive deeper in, obviously, people are going to bring up I'm not drafting Lauren Betts, even though if you dive deeper into WNBA you realize that The Dallas Wings did sign two pretty good front court players this offseason, so that's one of the reasons.

But I mean, it's a great conversation.

I think it would be a great story if they did open up about it, but they're being naive to it, and this is the big leagues , and um the story can also help, but it, it also takes it even bigger.

These are global conversations that people care about, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, it's like, you, you go to.

Other markets you go like to the northeast, like I don't know what their schedule is when they play the Connecticut Sun.

I'm sure this is going to come up.

It's going to be a story in the north.

I, I just, I think that, I think it could have been a non-story because I'm sure if Azia Budd gave some benign answer, there wasn't gonna be a follow-up.

Like it wasn't like there was gonna be 6 questions about it.

If you just answered the question, it would have gone away.

Instead, it's everywhere.

We're talking about it on NB.

podcast.

Like this is, this is, this is what I'm talking about, man.

If you ask our president, tell us about Monica Lewinsky, I believe any question goes.

Like, you know what I'm saying?

But it's, it's not, but it's not about, it's not about women though.

Like, again, if there, if there were two guys in your locker room that were having a relationship, like, let's say like, I don't even want to like make hypotheticals, but like just two guys that were in a relationship.

I can give you names.

I'm just joking, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Uh, it, I, I would, I would want, you'd want to know more and look, this idea, and it goes back to Kathy Engelberg is that, that really at the draft when you said like, would you ask this question of a man, really rubbed me the wrong way because of course, if Adam Silver had been given like a vote of no confidence by the players, uh, months earlier, like Kathy Engelbert was, of course, we would have hit Adam Silver.

I just wrote a whole story for SI.

About the challenges Adam Silver is facing this offseason.

Like, you are the commissioner of a major sports league.

You are going to come under the microscope every single decision that you make .

It's, it's the way it goes if you're, if you're in that particular position.

And, and also to, to like, not only just the ladies, like you guys are unbelievable.

You're strong, you're impactful, like.

To compare yourself as a man aside from anything else that's beneath you.

But like, just as your counterparts, like just stop bringing that shit up, bro.

Like that, that what you ask a man that, it's just so like answer the question, goddamn it.

Like that's it.

Like we all go through some stuff.

I've never once sat that.

I, I've been asked tons of uncomfortable questions.

I've never been like, you, would you ever ask this man that?

Like, no, like it's And, and it's not even that, you guys are so smart.

You're so wavy, the platform.

Don't give them any bulletin board material.

Like, do you understand what I'm saying?

That's, that's, it's as simple as that.

Like we wanna learn about the league, the good, bad and ugly.

That's how you become part of the everyday cycle.

You got beautiful shit in the league, ugly, like right now we have the most viewership in forever.

And then we also have an NBA scandal and gambling.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

You're going to see all of it due to what?

This is a big money sport, big game thing, like, that's just how it goes.

Yeah, that's the way it goes.

When you're in that position, a position of power, you're going to come under great scrutiny.

Uh, I think the NBA handles it great.

Adam Silver addresses the media all the time, doesn't always give the answers that you want, but always answers every single question.

The WNBA does not do it.

And believe me, and their NBA counterparts, they take note.

I talked to people in the league office.

I talked to people on teams about it all the time.

They can't believe sometimes some of the Some of the ways that the WNBA handles potential problems, they make problems bigger, and there's really no, no reason to do it.

Um, yeah, and you give Adam Silver credit because he's, he's naturally non-confrontational.

Like when you sit as you tell me as a reporter, like he shows up and tries to have a conversation, a solution, like make it work, not come and not saying with Englebert or anything, he just doesn't try to be defensive.

What do you need to know?

I have the answers.

You guys have assumptions.

I'm in a position of power.

I'll answer.

I'll answer, and I, I'll always give Adam Silver that type of credit because he, he's done gracefully in every sense, like in keeping the waters cool and calm, even when he probably should be blowing up in certain areas, you know.

Yeah, I agree.

I agree.

Adam Silver, I think, is one of the best commissioners the NBA has ever had, one of the best commissioners sports has ever had.

I really believe that.

And I, and I, I say that as someone that wrote today on Friday.

About all the challenges he's facing this offseason and all the crises that he has to, has to deal with this offseason from gambling to tanking to all the things that are infecting the NBA.

And he keeps it cool, bro.

He, that's a, that's a cool operator, bro.

Like he steers the ship well and then shoot, man.

I believe him and Kim had a fling.

No, I'm just joking.

Oh wow, OK, let me stop.

Let me stop.

When I saw that Kim, yeah, I was like, man, I don't, I don't think he's slick.

All right.