How Azzi Fudd's arrival impacts revamped Wings' starting lineup ranking
Fudd is reuniting with Paige Bueckers in Dallas.
How Azzi Fudd's arrival impacts revamped Wings' starting lineup ranking originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here . Few teams have been quite as busy this WNBA offseason as the Dallas Wings .
After Paige Bueckers' rookie season ended with a 10-34 record, the Wings took action to ensure their rebuild around Bueckers and Arike Ogunbowale wouldn't go awry. Dallas fired first-year head coach Chris Koclanes and replaced him with Jose Fernandez, the longtime coach at the University of South Florida. When free agency opened, the Wings signed Ogunbowale to a max contract extension and pulled off a coup in acquiring Alanna Smith, the reigning co-Defensive Player of the Year.
The frontcourt revamp -- which also included signing Jessica Shepard away from the Minnesota Lynx -- paved the way for Dallas to pick Azzi Fudd first overall in Monday night's rookie draft. MORE: Ranking every WNBA team's starting fives in 2026, from new-look Liberty to Angel Reese-inspired Dream So where do the Wings stack up after all these moves? According to The Sporting News' ranking, Dallas now has the WNBA's seventh-best starting lineup.
That is quite the jump for a team that won only 10 games a season ago. In Fudd, Bueckers and Ogunbowale, the Wings have assembled an explosive trio that can get buckets at a rate few other guard rotations can match on paper. Bueckers, the near-unanimous Rookie of the Year in 2025, can do it all on the offensive end: she's efficient, she makes plays for others and she's a winner.