NEW YORK — Azzi Fudd is going to Dallas.
The Wings selected the UConn guard with the No. 1 overall pick of the 2026 WNBA draft on Monday night in Manhattan.
Her rookie contract will pay $500,000 in its first year. Her Wings teammate Paige Bueckers, taken first in the 2025 draft, made $78,831 from her base salary last season.
Fudd and Bueckers have also said they are dating.
The huge increase comes from the league’s new collective bargaining agreement secured last month with WNBA players. The deal brings the salary cap to $7 million, up from $1.5 million in 2025. The deal coincides with the start of the WNBA’s new media rights deal worth $200 million annually with ESPN, Amazon, and NBC. The 11-year deal will bring the league $2.2 billion, with options to renegotiate three years in.
The Minnesota Lynx selected TCU’s Olivia Miles second. She will make $466,913 in her first year. Next came 19-year-old Spanish sensation Awa Fam, who heads to Seattle on a $436,016 deal.
Three national champion UCLA Bruins were taken at fourth, fifth, and sixth: Lauren Betts to the Washington Mystics, Gabriela Jaquez to the Chicago Sky, and Kiki Rice to the Toronto Tempo.
Another Spanish player, Iyana Martín Carrión, was selected at No. 7 by the Portland Fire, the second year in a row that an expansion team took an international player with their first pick in the entry draft. This year, the Valkyries went closer to home with LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson at No. 8.
“I’m just blessed and grateful to be able to come at this time,” Johnson told reporters of the new CBA gains. “My goal is to leave it better than I found it.” (Johnson was traded later in the evening to the Seattle Storm.)
UCLA’s Angela Dugalić, heading to the Mystics, and South Carolina’s Raven Johnson, going to the Indiana Fever, rounded out the top 10.
Johnson told reporters she learned a lot about the new CBA over draft weekend from older players in the WNBA.
“You have to thank them,” Johnson said of the players who negotiated the deal. “They did a lot for the game of women’s basketball to get here. And I think with our class and our generation, we need to fight just how they fought for us for the next generation.”
The Connecticut Sun drafted UCLA’s Gianna Kneepkens with the 15th and final pick of the opening round, breaking a WNBA record for the most players selected from one school in the first round.
The Sun reached a deal last month to sell the team for $300 million to Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, which would involve moving the team and bringing back the Houston Comets franchise.
“I definitely know that I’ve seen it in the news that they’re moving,” Kneepkens told reporters. “I’m just going to kind of go at it one day at a time, and kind of focus on this year. But I think if they believe that’s what is right to grow the league, then that’s exciting, and I’m just willing to be part of any opportunity that there is.”
