For 3 many years we’ve coated many superb basketball characters, however some stand above the remaining—not solely due to their on-court expertise (although these are all the time related), however due to how they influenced and proceed to affect basketball tradition, and thus influenced SLAM. In the meantime, SLAM has additionally modified these gamers’ lives in varied methods, as we’ve documented their careers with traditional covers, legendary images, superb tales, compelling movies and extra.
We compiled a gaggle of people (programming word: 30 entries, not 30 folks whole) who imply one thing particular to SLAM and to our viewers. Learn the full checklist right here and order your copy of SLAM 248, the place this checklist was initially revealed, right here.
Paige Bueckers’ title is synonymous with greatness.
Gatorade Participant of the Yr, AP Participant of the Yr, USBWA Participant of the Yr, Naismith Trophy winner, Picket Award winner, Greatest Feminine School Athlete ESPY Award winner—the checklist may fill this complete web page.
Her title is one which the world has turn out to be effectively accustomed to listening to, from her ninth grade phenom days throughout to the Insanity of March.
SLAM has been part of Bueckers’ journey for the reason that summer season earlier than her senior 12 months, when SLAM highschool videographers and photographers would pull as much as her AAU tournaments and be amazed by what they have been witnessing. It continued within the fall of her senior 12 months, when the Minnesota phenom bought her first function in our iconic pages.
Not lengthy after that, we bought to see who Paige was not solely as a hooper however as an individual, by way of WSLAM’s first season of “All Eyes On Us”—a digital video collection that follows a highschool group by way of a full season—the place Bueckers and the Hopkins Royals have been on a mission to carry dwelling this system’s first-ever nationwide title. By that collection, the world bought to see what our employees noticed each time we sat to talk together with her for an interview: a celebrity.
She was a hooper with no concern of going for robust buckets who had ruthless handles that dropped defenders virtually each recreation and a passing fashion so clean that her coaches in contrast her to Magic Johnson.
But additionally, an individual with an aura so particular that she lifted up everybody round her, each on and off the court docket. We have been together with her when she copped a pair of Jordan XI Breds (a “will need to have” for sneakerheads, as she put it), and we have been there when she jokingly messed together with her teammates on the bus to away video games.
Then the pandemic shut the world down simply as Paige and her teammates have been within the locker room making ready for his or her state championship recreation, and we witnessed the heartbreak of a possible historic season minimize quick. Within the “All Eyes On Us” season 1 finale, Bueckers was uncooked and emotional about what that season meant to her and her teammates.
As Paige made historical past in Minnesota that season, she made historical past for SLAM, too, changing into the primary highschool woman to be featured on our cowl (SLAM 226). It looks like I used to be in that fitness center simply yesterday, watching the long run celebrity step onto the set carrying “Pinnacle” Air Jordan VIs. That day, everybody knew they have been within the presence of greatness.
Her freshman 12 months at UConn put the world on discover as soon as once more, when she gained nearly each award doable in NCAA girls’s hoops, all whereas making an attempt to recruit her greatest pal and the highest prospect within the class of 2021, Azzi Fudd. As soon as Azzi locked in her dedication, we linked up with the backcourt duo and shot one other historic cowl, for SLAM 235, the “New World Subject,” a themed concern about the way in which the hoops world was altering in actual time.
Whereas Bueckers has cemented herself in historical past with all she’s achieved on the NCAA stage, her story is simply starting. Paige is a competitor at coronary heart, and in what might be her ultimate season in Storrs, she has her sights set on bringing dwelling a nationwide championship. Bueckers can be eligible for the WNBA draft this spring, and whether or not she decides to go this 12 months or use her final 12 months of school eligibility, she’ll eventually turn out to be the way forward for the W.
Paige has meant a lot to SLAM due to what we’ve constructed collectively through the years. From iconic covers to months of capturing her ultimate season in highschool, Paige is a legend within the SLAM halls—and I imply that fairly actually. Her cowl photograph takes up a full wall inside SLAM HQ. She was the beginning of SLAM’s enlargement into ladies grassroots basketball, and we’ve gotten to witness her journey from the beginning. Whether or not this 12 months or subsequent, Paige will hear her title known as on the WNBA Draft, and as she walks throughout that stage, you higher imagine we’ll already be cooking up an thrilling strategy to doc the following chapter of her journey.
Picture by Johnnie Izquierdo.