The home opener for the Lynx on Wednesday night at Target Center was briefly overshadowed by a homecoming for Minnesota native Paige Bueckers.
She garnered a very loud cheer during player introductions for the Dallas Wings before the Lynx ran out of the tunnel.
It was the realization of a lifelong dream for Bueckers, the former star for Hopkins High School, who took her talents to the University of Connecticut before eventually being selected by the Wings with the No. 1 pick in the 2025 WNBA draft.
Not that anybody is surprised that Buckers made it to the highest level.
It was pretty clear from a young age that she was destined for greatness.
Here are some stories from those that got to see Bueckers up close and personal during her rise up the ranks.
‘She was like a child prodigy’
Maybe the most viral story about Bueckers to date came courtesy of KARE 11 photojournalist Gary Knox. His daughter Evelyn was playing varsity for Hopkins when he attended an open gym on Sept. 24, 2013.
“I remember a few of the parents came up to me asking if I had seen the sixth grader tearing it up,” Knox said. “I walked over to the other court and she like was a child prodigy out there. It was like a little kid playing Mozart on the piano. You’re like, ‘They shouldn’t be playing this well.’”
That was the first time Knox had ever seen Bueckers. He noticed how dominate she was despite being among the smallest players on the floor. She made up for her lack of size and strength with her skill and swagger.
“She was a few steps ahead of everybody else,” Knox said. “She was just different.”
It was enough that Knox wanted to document it. He ran a website on the side highlighting different girls basketball players across Minnesota and figured people might want to know about this rising star.
“I went up to her dad and asked permission to tweet about her,” Knox said. “The rest is history.”
The tweet proved to be prophetic, as Knox told people to remember the name, going as far as comparing Bueckers to the GOAT Diana Taurasi.
It has been retweeted more than 10,000 times, going viral a number of times when Bueckers was playing at UConn, then again last month before she was selected by the Wings with the No. 1 pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft.
‘She set the standard for everybody else’
Not many people on the planet have spent more time with Bueckers than her longtime AAU coach Tara Starks. They started working together for the first time when Bueckers was 10 years old and they have remained in each other’s lives ever since.
“You could tell right away she was special,” Starks said. “It actually took me a little bit to realize she was playing up for her age. She was younger than all the kids she was playing against. That made it that much more impressive when I realized that.”
Most kids that age are singularly focused with getting to the basket. That wasn’t the case for Bueckers. Not in the slightest.
“She was so unselfish,” Starks said. “She liked to pass the ball. She had the ability to get anywhere on the court and get her teammates good looks. She did a lot that kids at that age don’t normally do.”
That unselfishness has served as a compass for Bueckers as she has continued to progress throughout her career. Though she could dominate the game with her scoring, she always took an immense amount of pride in getting her teammates involved.
Asked about some of the other character traits that stood out, Starks pointed to how committed Bueckers is to her craft.
“We would have open gym at 6 p.m.,” Starks said. “I would pick her up from Lifetime Fitness around the corner from her house, then, if we got done early enough, I would drop her back off and she would keep working.”
That commitment from Bueckers has left a lasting impact that has continued long after she has moved on.
“She created this mentality,” Starks said. “You’ve seen a lot of kids around here, like, ‘I want to be better than Paige.’ They are putting in a lot of hours because that’s what she used to do. She set the standard for everybody else.”
‘She’s so good for the game’
The first time that former Wayzata girls basketball coach Mike Schumacher scouted Bueckers still sticks out to him more than a decade later. She was playing varsity as an eighth grader for Hopkins at the time and he knew he was going to have his hands full for the foreseeable future.
“She was coming off the bench and I was sitting next to another coach and I said, ‘They are better when Paige is on the floor,’” Schumacher said. “She was the driving force for them even at that age and everybody knew it.”
The game plan anytime Wayzata played Hopkins started and stopped with Bueckers.
“We had to figure out what we wanted to take away,” Schumacher said. “If we didn’t worry about her scoring, she would kill us by herself. If we worried too much about her scoring, she would kill us by getting the ball to her teammates.”
As talented as Wayzata was in the mid to late 2010s, it never made the state tournament because, well, Bueckers always made sure Hopkins won the section championship.
“I became a fan of hers once she got to UConn,” Schumacher said with a laugh. “It took a little bit of time. She’s so good for the game. She always has been.”
‘She was something special’
As he went down memory lane this week, Hopkins girls basketball coach Brian Cosgriff admitted Bueckers was good enough to play varsity as a seventh grader. She instead played junior varsity and led that group to an undefeated record.
The following year Bueckers played varsity an eighth grader and immediately made her presence felt.
“I remember we were playing Elk River pretty early on and she came off the bench and hit like eight 3-pointers,” Cosgriff said. “That’s when I knew she was something special.”
As she continued to develop her game, Cosgriff actually had to convince Bueckers to be more selfish at times.
“She loves her teammates more than anything,” Cosgriff said. “If I ever had to yell at her, it was because she didn’t shoot enough.”
After winning a state championship as a junior, Bueckers was in position to win in another state championship as a senior. She never got the chance. On the eve of the state championship game between Hopkins and Farmington, the Minnesota State High School League cancelled all activities in response to COVID-19.
“We weren’t going to lose that game,” Cosgriff said. “I know Paige well enough to know she wasn’t going to let us lose that game.”
As much success as they experienced together, there’s a particular moment that stands out to Cosgriff when he thinks about Bueckers and her journey to get to this point. He remembers when she was a senior, she got invited to a Timberwolves game. She was honored during a break in the action.
“I thought to myself, ‘How cool would it be to see her play against the Lynx on this floor?’” Cosgriff said. “Sure enough, she made it happen, and I couldn’t be more proud of her.”
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