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Photo of Young Paige Bueckers Goes Viral Ahead of 2025 WNBA Draft

Ryan Phillips

UConn guard Paige Bueckers on the orange carpet before the 2025 WNBA Draft.
UConn guard Paige Bueckers on the orange carpet before the 2025 WNBA Draft. / Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images
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On the night she became the No. 1 pick in the 2025 WNBA draft, an old picture of Paige Bueckers has begun making the rounds.

The photo and the tweet that contain it are from September 24, 2013. It was posted to X (then Twitter) by Minneapolis photojournalist Gary Knox, with the tweet reading, "Remember the name: Paige Bueckers. 6th grade, think Diana Taurasi. Best 6th grade G I've ever seen. St. Louis Park."

A WNBA team would be wise to hire Knox as a scout.

The tweet is below.

Since then, Bueckers has gone on to be a McDonald's All-American, national high school player of the year, a three-time first-team All-American in college and the national player of the year in 2001. She also led UConn to a national championship this year before entering the WNBA draft.

Knox recently discussed the photo with The Athletic. He ran a preps basketball website in Minnesota back then and the Bueckers tweet didn't garner much attention until years later. He was at an open gym where his daughter was playing when he spotted Bueckers.

"A couple of parents were coming around [saying], ‘Hey, have you seen the sixth-grader over there?' I said, 'No, what sixth-grader?' And then I looked around and then all of a sudden it was, 'Oh, yeah. I see exactly who you’re talking about.' She was just over there putting in work and doing her thing on the sophomore/freshman court."

That's a very cool moment captured years before Bueckers became a national sensation.

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Ryan Phillips
RYAN PHILLIPS

Ryan Phillips is a senior writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He has worked in digital media since 2009, spending eight years at The Big Lead before joining SI in 2024. Phillips also co-hosts The Assembly Call Podcast about Indiana Hoosiers basketball and previously worked at Bleacher Report. He is a proud San Diego native and a graduate of Indiana University’s journalism program.

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