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WNBA All-Star Takeaways: Azzi Fudd Earns a New Crown, Ellie Puts Other Mascots to Shame

The Dallas rookie made the three-point contest look effortless. Plus, there’s a reason why everyone’s favorite elephant has all those sponsorship deals.
Emma Baccellieri|
Azzi Fudd won Friday’s three-point contest, outshooting Portland’s Bridget Carleton in the final.
Azzi Fudd won Friday’s three-point contest, outshooting Portland’s Bridget Carleton in the final. | Kamil Krzaczynski/Imagn Images

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Dallas WingsNew York Liberty

CHICAGO — WNBA’s All-Star Weekend got started on Friday with the annual three-point contest and a new “Shooting Stars” competition. Here’s what stood out to Sports Illustrated on the ground.  

Azzi Fudd Is a Generationally Pure Shooter

Not exactly a novel insight. But the Wings rookie used her first three-point contest to offer a beautiful reminder of it. The No. 1 overall pick has a beautifully compact shooting form—a motion that looks almost impossibly smooth. There’s a real economy of movement here, and it gives her a case for the most aesthetically pleasing form in the league, if not in basketball more broadly. Fudd bested Fire wing Bridget Carleton for the championship. (Even after a late night out yesterday with the StudBudz.) She made it seem like the most natural outcome in the world.

This Was a Great Field. Why Couldn’t It Have Been Even Better?

It was plenty nice to watch Fudd and Carleton go against sharpshooters like Marina Mabrey and Rhyne Howard. But imagine a field with, say, Caitlin Clark and Sabrina Ionescu. The last week has buzzed with reports that both stars declined to participate in the contest along with Lynx guard Kayla McBride. Ionescu refuted that and said that she never received an official invite. The WNBA pushed back with a statement that Ionescu received the same invite that she had in years past. McBride said that her invitation came only in the form of a text message to her agent sent days before the contest. Set aside the “she-said-league-said” of it all. This should not be so complicated.

The league, obviously, cannot force any player to participate. But leadership can be proactive about going to stars early and framing the question differently: What can we offer to secure your participation? Maybe the answer is nothing. But that would be a hell of a lot better than public discussions about what constitutes an official invitation and grousing about methodology. A contest with Clark, Ionescu and Fudd would be electric. The league should be doing what it can to make that worth their while. 

Elena Delle Donne shooting stars All-Star contest
Former player Elena Delle Donne returned to the floor on Friday in the WNBA’s new “Shooting Stars” skills competition. | Kamil Krzaczynski/Imagn Images

Shooting Stars Hits the Mark

The WNBA ditched its skills competition this year for an event designed to celebrate the 30th season of the league: “Shooting Stars” put retired stars, active players and high-school prospects on teams for a shooting contest. Some of the 30th-season celebrations this year have felt clumsy or ham-fisted. But this one was genuinely lovely. It was a delight to see players like Lauren Jackson and Deanna “Tweety” Nolan suit up again. And it felt especially sweet to watch Elena Delle Donne, who helped push the Mystics to a win here alongside Shakira Austin and 17-year-old Jezelle “GG” Banks.

The league’s recent boom has brought renewed attention to some of its first stars. (Look no further than the honorary general managers for these All-Star squads: Cynthia Cooper and Teresa Weatherspoon.) There have been a slew of retrospectives and throwback events focused on the earliest years of the WNBA. But there has been almost nothing about the players who slogged through the thankless years that followed—when the league was no longer novel but still fighting to secure its survival. That period swallowed essentially the entire career of Delle Donne, who retired at the age of 33 after 2023, just before she got a chance to reap the benefits of the modern WNBA. To see a player like her back on this stage, under a different kind of spotlight, was a particular joy.   

Ellie the Elephant Still Has No Competition in the Mascot Game

All-Star Weekend is the only time all year that every WNBA mascot gathers in the same place. Which makes it the only time all year that other mascots are forced to reckon with the gap between their own performance and that of Ellie the Elephant. (That’s with all due respect to Violet of the Valkyries, who’s been making a clearly valiant effort here.) It’s true that Ellie simply has more to work with: The pachyderm has an extensive designer wardrobe and a massive social following that has won her invites to galas and profiles in Vogue. (Not to mention in Sports Illustrated.) She has sponsorships covering everything from her nail polish to her luggage. Perhaps more importantly, she has a team behind her that is willing to entertain not only the concept of an elephant mascot getting manicures, but also the concept of those manicures being sponsored by a major beauty company. Not every mascot can be so lucky. But watch all the mascots in action together, as fans did Friday, and you will understand: Ellie has earned those advantages. No one on the floor was anywhere near as magnetic as the elephant. There can be a sweaty, desperate quality to other mascots, awkwardly eager to please. Ellie puts them all to shame.  

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Emma Baccellieri
EMMA BACCELLIERI

Emma Baccellieri is a staff writer focused on women’s basketball for Sports Illustrated. She previously covered MLB. She has also written for Baseball Prospectus and has been honored with multiple awards from the Society of American Baseball Research. A graduate of Duke University, she lives in Washington, D.C.

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