Updated

Updated · Bleacher Report · Aug 19

Dallas Wings Shut Down Azzi Fudd After 30 Games for Season-Ending Right Knee Surgery

Updated

Updated · Bleacher Report · Aug 19

Dallas Wings Shut Down Azzi Fudd After 30 Games for Season-Ending Right Knee Surgery

Q: With Azzi Fudd's historic rookie campaign cut short, can the battered Dallas Wings still secure a playoff spot without their top sharpshooter?

Yes — Dallas is still well positioned to make the playoffs, but Fudd’s injury sharply lowers its margin for error and likely its ceiling. The Wings are 20-16 with eight games left and remain in the top eight, while the nearest chasers are several games back. Recent reporting and playoff projections have still treated Dallas as a strong bet to qualify, with some odds implying better than a 90% chance. That cushion matters, because the team probably does not need to play great basketball the rest of the way to hold its spot. The concern is form. Dallas has lost four of the five games Fudd has missed, and its offense loses a major weapon without her 13.1 points per game and nearly 40% three-point shooting. Fudd was not just a scorer; she stretched defenses, opened space for Paige Bueckers and Arike Ogunbowale, and had become one of the league’s most dangerous complementary guards. Her rookie year was historic in its own right, highlighted by winning the WNBA 3-Point Contest as the first rookie and first Wings player to do it. Dallas’ path now depends on Bueckers and Ogunbowale carrying more of the shot creation, and on the Wings defending well enough to survive tighter, lower-efficiency games. The standings cushion says they can still get in. The recent slide says nothing is secure if the losses keep piling up. So the playoff spot is still there for Dallas to claim, but without Fudd, it looks more like a fight to get in than a team built to make real postseason noise.

3 articles · Updated · Bleacher Report · Aug 19

Dallas said Azzi Fudd will undergo right knee surgery next week, ending the No. 1 pick's rookie season after she had already missed games since an Aug. 5 loss to Washington.
The procedure is meant to relieve right knee soreness, but it also revives durability concerns around a knee she injured repeatedly, including ACL and MCL tears in high school and again at UConn.
Fudd finishes her first WNBA season with 30 appearances, 13.1 points per game and 39.7% 3-point shooting—production that had made her a key floor-spacing piece for Dallas.
Dallas sits eighth with an eight-game runway and a 4.5-game cushion over ninth-place Portland, but losing Fudd complicates its playoff push and any potential first-round matchup with top-seeded Minnesota.