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The WNBA Draft and the Political Imperative of Minding Your Own Business

With the first pick of the WNBA draft, the Dallas Stars picked Azzi Fudd. It sparked a sexist, homophobic conversation online.

Azzi Fudd of UConn, right, poses with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert after the Dallas Wings selected Fudd with the 1st pick of the 2026 WNBA Draft on April 13, 2026 in New York City.

The place of women in the sports world has come a long way since whale-bone corsets would puncture the lungs of teenaged tennis players, but we are nowhere near where we need to be. We saw this last week when a sexist, homophobic frenzy emerged following the WNBA draft. 

With the first pick, the Dallas Stars selected UConn’s all-American guard Azzi Fudd, reuniting her with old UConn teammate, last year’s rookie of the year Paige Bueckers. The Stars have created what could be an all-world backcourt, and yet the media is less interested in the future of the team than the news that Bueckers and Fudd may be an item. ESPN has described their relationship as overshadowing the Stars’s choice of Fudd and wonder how it could impact the Stars’s future prospects. (Fudd and Bueckers confirmed that they were dating last year, but have not spoken on the record about it since.)

We live in a society, rooted in sexism and homophobia, that has an insatiable appetite for gossip and voyeurism, so of course people are interested in their personal lives. Previously in the WNBA, player couplings, while hardly new, were rarely discussed. But the Fudd-Bueckers relationship is dragging this reality, willingly or not, into the light.

At her introductory press conference, a reporter pressed Fudd about the relationship by asking whether Bueckers and she had sought out advice from other WNBA players who had been in relationships with people on their same team. Before being........

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