Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd aren’t just Dallas Wings teammates, fellow first-overall WNBA Draft picks and Connecticut alums – they’re also a couple, as they confirmed in July of 2025.
So, things might get the teensiest bit awkward on payday when Fudd deposits a portion of her historic $500,000 rookie salary just one year after Bueckers – someone with the same employer, job title and pedigree – was paid a mere $78,831.
The discrepancy isn’t the result of better negotiating tactics or any sudden generosity from the Wings. Fudd, the first pick of Monday’s WNBA Draft, is the beneficiary of a recently ratified collective-bargaining agreement that’s effectively adding an extra ‘0’ to rookie contracts.
And she’s not alone. Veterans such as Jackie Young and Brittney Griner have surpassed the $1 million salary milestone, while the new CBA has also retroactively increased existing rookie contracts.
That means Bueckers will be paid $499,200 in 2026 and $549,120 in 2027, while Indiana Fever sensation Caitlin Clark will see her pay jump from $76,000 as a rookie to $78,066 last year to $527,155.20 for this year.
All of these improvements were agreed upon in the new CBA, which resulted in a new record-high $7 million salary cap in 2026 while freeing the league’s top stars from lengthy five-figure rookie contracts.
Fudd (left) will make $500,000 as a rookie in 2026 a year after her former UConn and current Wings teammate Paige Buckers (right) was paid a mere $78,831 over her first WNBA season
Indiana Fever sensation Caitlin Clark will see her pay jump from $78,066 to $527,155.20 in 2026. She made just $76,000 as a rookie under the previous collective-bargaining agreement
Now first-year players can have salaries approaching the league’s average pay of $583,000, whereas Bueckers earned just 63 percent the league-average salary of $125,000 in 2025.
With a new minimum salary of $270,000 – $20,756 more than last year’s maximum salary – every single WNBA player will make more in 2026 than any one player did in 2025.
‘I’m not really sure I have words to describe that feeling, what that meant,’ Fudd said after being drafted. ‘I don’t think it’s fully sunk in. It’s nothing I could have imagined. The feeling of sitting with my family, with Morgan [Valley], hearing your name called, go up there. Such a surreal feeling.’
As for reuniting with her former UConn Huskies teammate, Fudd was predictably excited about that too.
‘Paige is an incredible player, everyone knows that,’ she said. ‘She’s someone that makes playing basketball with easy.’
