Gossip around Azzi Fudd and Paige Bueckers’s relationship misreads the WNBA
The former UConn star’s draft night should have been about her talent.Instead, speculation shows how the league is still being viewed through the wrong lensSign up for our WNBA 30 newsletterFor the first time in a while, there was no consensus on who would go No 1 overall in the WNBA draft this year.When the Dallas Wings did make their pick, they chose Azzi Fudd, who had distinguished herself under Geno Auriemma at UConn, including a national championship in 2025.The moment she was picked was pure: a delighted and seemingly nervous Fudd joined WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert onstage.She took photos with her jersey, made it through the ESPN interview that immediately followed, and beamed at her family and teammates in the audience.
Paige Bueckers, who played alongside the 23-year-old at UConn and was the No 1 pick for the Wings in 2025, was there also to celebrate a well-deserved honor for Fudd.Fudd was considered one of the best shooters in the college game, was named All-American by the Associated Press, and was a member of the All-Big East first team – and that’s just in her final season.But rather than looking at the impact Fudd will have in the professional game, it was her relationship with Bueckers that dominated the draft night discourse.The pair confirmed they were dating last year but have offered few public details about their relationship since, and it’s possible they’re no longer together at all.It’s their right to leave fans in the dark if they wish.
It’s also how players in the league have always moved.The WNBA is entering its 30th season.Like any workplace, the league has been home to romantic relationships as long as it has existed.Women dating women isn’t anything new in the W, but a fixation on the love lives of grown women who are the best at the game in the world is.Frankie de la Cretaz, author of the Out of Your League newsletter, notes that while the league’s foundational audience was largely queer, the “dominant culture” is now imposing its own narratives on a league where a quarter of players are out.
As a result, says De la Cretaz, “the cultural context and history is erased.The WNBA and its locker rooms are culturally lesbian spaces, and those spaces come with different social norms than straight ones do.”While large portions of WNBA newcomers may obsess over players’ relationships, for the athletes themselves it’s business as usual.Some of those norms include “the fact that members of the sapphic community regularly socialize with their girlfriends, their exes, and/or their exes’ new girlfriends,” De la Cretaz adds.“WNBA players have been dating each other for a long time, and for every couple that we know about, there are dozens that we never will.
There are hookups, situationships, and breakups on WNBA teams all the time.These insular, overlapping social dynamics are not just common in women’s sports locker rooms – they’re a core aspect of how lesbian communities operate, too.”To a large degree, the surge of interest in the love lives of WNBA players is fueled by social media.It’s never been so easy to hop on your phone, type in an athlete’s name, and find no shortage of posts speculating about their social life.Parasocial relationships are simpler than ever to form; Instagram and TikTok, which are popular with WNBA players, make such attachments even easier.
But there’s also something else at work, says Dr Alicia Smith-Tran, an associate professor of sociology and comparative American studies at Oberlin College,“Obviously, the status of women’s sports is elevating,” says Smith-Tran, who played on Oberlin’s basketball team as an undergraduate,But despite the surge in popularity of leagues such as the WNBA, she says “women who are professional athletes continue to be seen as lesser than their male counterparts”,The focus on the romantic lives of players “is kind of a manifestation of how women athletes continue to be marginalized, and the focus is taken off their skills and contributions in the workplace,” Smith-Tran adds,In short, it’s “another way that women athletes are being painted as less worthy, or less talented, when compared to men”.
They become the object of gossip columns rather than sports columns.The public’s resistance to seeing women as athletes in the same way we view their male counterparts is due to the fact that culturally, “we tend to see athleticism as a masculine trait,” says Smith-Tran.That’s especially true for basketball, which requires attributes – such as height and strength – that don’t neatly square with how most of us frame femininity.NBA stars like LeBron James and Steph Curry also have romantic relationships – notably, not same-sex ones – “but that’s kind of just a nice side fact that we know about them, compared to seeing [what happens] with women in the WNBA, where the focus [may be] on their relationship first – and then we watch and see if they prove themselves as athletes who are worthy in the same way.”There’s another problem with the conversations around romance in the WNBA: they contribute to the fetishization of queer couples and relationships.
Whether Fudd and Bueckers are still in a relationship is a side point; what’s more relevant is the exoticization of the idea that they may be.“I think the idea of two superstars of a sports league potentially being in a relationship with each other plays into so many tropes from people’s favorite romance novels, and it can be easy to get carried away in the fantasy,” says De la Cretaz.This was highlighted during the frenzy around the gay ice hockey drama Heated Rivalry.“All too often, queer relationships are fetishized and dehumanized, becoming fodder for people to project their own desires on to,” says De la Cretaz.“The problem, however, is that Paige and Azzi are not characters in a novel; they are real people and these are their actual lives.
”
It will take more than £600m a year to boost UK industrial competitiveness | Nils Pratley
It is “bold action” to boost UK competitiveness, claimed the government. Not everybody shared that assessment of the British industrial competitiveness scheme (Bics), the long-awaited plan to cut electricity bills for UK manufacturers by up to 25% – or, at least, to cut them for a subset of firms that are aligned with the eight chosen sectors of the “modern” industrial strategy.“Gas intensive industries in the UK have been shamefully ignored by the government in this announcement – it’s a total disgrace,” said Gary Smith, the general secretary of the GMB union, banging the drum for the likes of ceramics-makers and brickmakers that aren’t deemed modern enough for support. Employer bodies mostly did the polite thing of welcoming government assistance of any form before using phrases such as “drop in the ocean”.And, it’s true, £600m a year across 10,000 companies isn’t much
IMF chief Georgieva warns ‘everyone will feel the impact’ of energy price shock, as UK growth beats forecasts – as it happened
Over in Washington DC, the International Monetary Fund is holding a debate on the global economy.IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva says the world economy is facing another, large, shock:double quotation markThe world economy has been, very resilient over the last few years, facing shock after the shock. And this resilience is tested yet again, this time by a shock that is large.Twenty percent of oil and gas is stuck in the Strait of Hormuz, depriving primarily Asia, but also Europe, and other parts of the world of a vital resource. It is global
NAACP lawsuit accuses Elon Musk’s xAI of polluting Black neighborhoods near Memphis
A new lawsuit accuses Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company of illegally spewing toxic pollutants into residential neighborhoods on the border of Tennessee and Mississippi.The suit, filed on Tuesday in Mississippi federal court, alleges xAI is violating the Clean Air Act due to emissions from its makeshift power plant in Southaven, Mississippi, which powers its datacenter there. The NAACP, represented by the environmental groups Southern Environmental Law Center and Earthjustice, says xAI has been polluting areas with homes, schools and churches, including in historically Black communities, by using dozens of methane gas generators without permits.The organization is seeking to force the company to stop operating its unpermitted turbines in Southaven.“A data center should not be a potential death sentence for a community’s health,” Abre’ Conner, the director of environmental and climate justice for the NAACP, said in a statement
Fisa surveillance vote sparks fierce debate as Congress splits on warrantless monitoring
A controversial law that grants the US government sweeping powers for warrantless surveillance is set to expire next week. Replacing it has inspired fierce debate within the White House and Congress, including a scheduled vote cancelled the day of.A coalition of progressive Democrats and far-right Republicans is pushing for reform of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), but they face strong bipartisan opposition from lawmakers advocating for an 18-month renewal with no changes, in line with Donald Trump’s demands. House GOP leaders delayed a procedural vote on a clean extension of Section 702 on Wednesday, after the chamber’s rules committee approved the measure on Tuesday night. Republican leadership was expected to bring the measure to the floor on Wednesday but canceled the scheduled vote, amid dissent from privacy advocates in their own party
LIV and let die: golf rebels count cost of Saudi cutbacks and other sports fear worst | Matt Hughes
Public Investment Fund withdraws support for rebel tour and other sports could be hit too with Newcastle United uncertainThe reverberations of an unscheduled meeting of LIV Golf executives in New York this week have been felt way beyond their swanky offices in Hudson Yards, on the west side of Manhattan.A slowdown in Saudi Arabia’s lavish spending on sport, which is conservatively estimated to have cost the kingdom more than $10bn in the past five years, had been expected, but its Public Investment Fund’s withdrawal of financial support for the rebel tour – which was first mooted to LIV execs on Monday – has caused shockwaves throughout the wider industry.Significantly, the possibility of PIF’s withdrawal was not even addressed in an email sent by the LIV chief executive, Scott O’Neil, to his staff on Wednesday evening, which has left many of them more fearful for their jobs. Such concerns are not limited to golf, with other sports administrators fearful that similar cuts in Saudi’s budget could be coming their way.While LIV was the primary vehicle through which Saudi launched their ambitious attempt to become a leading global sports destination and promoter five years ago, with more than $5bn invested on the rebel tour, the arch disruptors were by no means the sole beneficiaries
Portcullis gets royal breeders dreaming at Newmarket’s ancient first rite of spring
Captain Cook was a few months away from landfall after his first circumnavigation of the earth when the first Craven meeting was held on Newmarket heath in the spring of 1771.It is older than any of the Classics, and old enough too to have the great Potoooooooo – who got his name when a stable lad was unsure how to spell potatoes – on the Craven Stakes’s roll of honour in 1782. For a quarter of a millennium250 years, the first meeting of the year on the Rowley Mile at Newmarket has been Flat racing’s first rite of spring.“It’s what keeps everybody going,” Jason Singh, the marketing director of the famous bloodstock auction house Tattersalls, said here on Thursday, “and I speak as a breeder and racehorse owner myself as well as a sales company employee.“Every year, at this time of year, everybody has got hopes that the next horse they’ve bought is going to be the next superstar, and until it’s not, it could be
Five key questions: who overruled decision to deny Mandelson security clearance?
Officials debate withholding Mandelson vetting documents from parliament
Revealed: Mandelson failed vetting but Foreign Office overruled decision
As an older man, I feel for Peter Mandelson being caught short | Letter
A decade on from Brexit, Britain still flounders without a place in the world | Letters
SNP pledges to cap bread and milk prices if it wins Scotland’s parliamentary elections