Azzi Fudd's rookie year is officially in the books, and it's ending on the operating table instead of the court. The Wings announced Fudd is out for the rest of the 2026 season and will undergo an arthroscopic procedure next week to deal with ongoing soreness in her right knee.
It's a brutal footnote to what had been one of the best debut seasons in the league. Fudd hadn't played since Aug. 5 and had already missed Dallas' last five games before the team pulled the plug on her season entirely, sending her back to Connecticut for the procedure.
The knee has haunted Fudd for years. She tore her ACL and MCL in that same right knee back in 2019, then tore the ACL and meniscus again two games into her junior season at UConn in 2023. She fought back from all of it to finally string together a full, healthy college season in 2025, capping it with a Final Four Most Outstanding Player award and a national title. Dallas made her the No. 1 overall pick banking on that health holding up.
For 30 games, it did, and Fudd made the most of it. She was putting up 13.1 points, 1.7 rebounds and 1.8 assists a night while shooting a scorching 39.7% from three, and in July she became the first rookie in WNBA history to win the league's 3-point contest.
Azzi Fudd in Year 1 of her rookie season in the WNBA: 👼 30 games played (24 starts) 👼 13.1 PPG 👼 1.7 RPG 👼 1.8 APG 👼 1.7 SPG 👼 45.6% FG 👼 39.7% 3PT 👼 82.6% FT 👼 First rookie to win the 3-point contest
The stat line only tells part of it — Dallas was reportedly a plus-13.1 net rating team with Fudd on the floor, easily the best mark on the roster, as the Wings doubled their win total from a year ago. Losing that kind of two-way engine down the stretch is a real problem for a team fighting to hang onto the final playoff spot.
There's no long-term structural damage being reported here, just soreness bad enough to require a scope, which is at least the best-case version of this news given her history. Still, for a player who's now had three separate knee procedures on the same leg since high school, every update going forward is going to get scrutinized. The rehab clock starts next week, and the Wings will have to find out how much of that plus-13.1 magic they can replicate without her for the rest of the year.