Paige Bueckers Makes WNBA GOAT Opinion Extremely Clear
The UConn Huskies women's basketball team has produced some of the best WNBA players in the sport's history.
Of course, part of this is owed to the legendary Geno Auriemma essentially getting his pick of the litter when it came to recruits for the majority of this century. This allowed him to always get the top talents across the country, many of whom were surely going to blossom into WNBA superstars regardless of where they played college ball.
But that's not to discredit the developmental abilities that Auriemma and his staff at UConn have, nor does it take away from the fact that they helped mold these superstars into the players they ultimately became.
The most recent UConn superstar to graduate into the WNBA is rookie Paige Bueckers, who is well on her way to winning the 2025 WNBA Rookie of the Year award. If Bueckers does secure this honor, she will have earned a lot of hardware this year, as she won a national championship with the Huskies (the 12th of Auriemma's career) back in April.
Paige Bueckers Praises Her WNBA GOAT Before Wings Game
While Bueckers has already accomplished a lot in the sport of women's basketball, she still has a long way to go before she can compare to several former UConn players who went on to have incredible WNBA careers.
One of these Huskies alumni is Maya Moore. While Moore didn't have the longest career (a career that included four WNBA championships, the 2014 WNBA Finals MVP, the 2014 WNBA MVP, and six All-Star games in eight seasons), she is still considered by many to be the women's basketball GOAT.
Maya Moore's MVP season from 2014 🔥 pic.twitter.com/2rQsiU9LW7
— Fastbreak Hoops (@FastbreakHoops5) August 10, 2025
Bueckers also shares this opinion. And when speaking with the media before the Wings' August 29 game against the Atlanta Dream, she explained why Maya Moore is her WNBA GOAT.
"I think it's her competitive spirit, and how much she has a will to win. And how she has won at every single level, and how that has translated every single place she's on," Bueckers said when asked why Moore is her GOAT, per an X post from @NoCapSpaceWBB.
"I mean, she's a bucket. [I just] enjoy watching her play. And then like I said, the off the court things, as well, separate her from just being a great player on the court," Bueckers added.
“Why is Maya Moore your 🐐?”
— No Cap Space WBB (@NoCapSpaceWBB) August 29, 2025
Paige Bueckers gives her answer ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/xlnLqFsTgW
Moore won the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage in 2021 for her work on criminal justice reform, which is largely why she stepped away from the WNBA when she was just 33 years old.
As Bueckers alluded to, while Moore will be remembered for what she accomplished on the basketball court, her off-court activism only adds to her legend.
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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.
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