Sue Bird Asserts Paige Bueckers Brought Cool Factor to Women's Basketball
While the UConn Huskies women's basketball team doesn't play another game until November 20, Paige Bueckers will be at the center of the basketball community on Sunday.
This is, of course, because of the 2025 WNBA Draft Lottery, which takes place at 5 PM ET and will essentially decide which team the projected No. 1 pick of the 2025 WNBA Draft will play for.
Not only is Bueckers a generational talent on the basketball court, but her persona and superstardom — and the ensuing attention and revenue she'll bring her eventual WNBA team because of it — makes it even more obvious that she'll be the No. 1 pick.
The 22-year-old has been poised for this superstardom for some time, as WNBA legend Sue Bird alluded to in the most recent episode of "The Deal" podcast with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly.
"I'm starting to see on social media, this kid's got buzz," Bird said of Bueckers in high school. "People are following her... when I saw that, I was like, 'Oh, we're good to go'.
"If you bring it back around to seeing Paige Bueckers getting that attention in high school, I was like 'Oh, something is changing,'" Bird continued. "For me, what that said was society is changing. Younger people are into... girl's basketball... And that all speaks to the cultural cache that I feel like pro sports usually have with women's basketball for some reason.
"We were the butt of the joke on SNL skits. We weren't cool just yet. And Paige to me marked this moment of coolness," she added.
Sue Bird says she knew women's basketball would blow up to a new level after seeing the popularity of Paige Bueckers in high school (via @bbgoriginals)
— WNBA Central (@TheWCentral) November 17, 2024
"We were the butt of the joke on SNL skits. We weren't cool just yet. And Paige to me marked this moment of coolness." pic.twitter.com/cS6EjoyErd
It will be fascinating to see how Bueckers' fame and acclaim continues once she enters the WNBA — and what team she'll be doing it for.
Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.