2017 AAU Player of the Summer: Paige Bueckers

Although the details are a little hazy now, it was one of the highlights of my AAU summer. There I was sitting in the bleachers among a group of parents from out of state, just settling in for the 7th or 8th game of the day. They had arrived all chatty and chipper, with that kind of smug confidence that comes from having a talented kid on a winning team. Losing clearly isn't in their DNA, but here we were, a few minutes into a game with North Tartan 9th, and they were blissfully unaware of what was about to go down: Steal. Swish. Dish. Swish. Dish. Steal. Swish. Swish. Time out. Paige Bueckers had just scored a quick 10 or 12 points and Tartan was up by just as many. The slack-jawed woman next to me turned to her husband and said just a little too loudly, “Who the F$%& is that girl?” “I don't know,” the man replied, “but she's not bad.”

Yep, Bueckers isn't bad. In fact, she's actually pretty good. And among all of the other accolades the 5'11″ superguard has earned – like that shiny gold medal she won with Team USA – Ms. Bueckers is now the Northstar Girls Hoops 2017 AAU Player of the Summer. If you, like the beleaguered parents whose team lost by probably 30 that afternoon, were not aware of Bueckers before now, consider yourselves informed. From the halls of Hopkins High School to a distant gym in Argentina and many college campuses in between, basketball people everywhere are up to speed on the skinny kid from Minnesota.

A wizard with the basketball

When attempting to describe Bueckers' game, it's easy to run out of superlatives in a hurry, and we've got three more years of milking the thesaurus. Here's what some national evaluators are saying:

• Confident combo-guard with a dose of swagger; manufactures, delivers consistently off the dribble; quick off the bounce, breaks down defenders; keeps the defense honest to the arc.
• Quick combo-guard with a scorer's mentality; brings flair to the backcourt, handles and attacks in transition; mid-range game; threat to the arc.
• Confident floor leader with combo game and a touch of swagger; elusive off the dribble, penetrates, draws contact and finishes plays; an elite guard in the class of 2020.
• Combo guard with a scorer's mentality; handles in transition, executes in half-court game; stretches the defense to the arc; has the ability to score in bunches.

As Bueckers' AAU coach since 5th grade, Tara Starks knows Paige's game as well as anybody. “She is a wizard with the basketball, just the purest of point guards that you will ever find,” Starks said. It's true. The sophomore-to-be is always looking to pass, and her teammates have figured out they had better have their hands in the ready position at all times. Bueckers always knows where everyone is, she knows exactly where to put the basketball, and she knows when to put it there. “It's absolutely amazing to me how she sees the floor,” Starks said. “She talks about wanting to play off the ball, but she doesn't understand that her greatness lies within having the ball in her hands.”

The ultimate teammate

There is one thing Paige is not very good at, and that's talking about herself. It clearly makes her uncomfortable. Her sentences are punctuated with “us” and “we” and “my team” and it's genuine. She will acknowledge one accomplishment: “I am proud of myself for making the USA team. It's something I have been working for and it paid off,” she said. “It was a lot of basketball in a three-week period with girls and coaches I had never met. Just traveling to another country was crazy, and it was a lot for three weeks. But I wouldn't trade it for the world.”

Bueckers has played on three very good basketball teams this year. Hopkins nearly won its seventh state championship, North Tartan 9th barnstormed its way across the country losing just three games, and Team USA swept the field to win gold in Argentina. You would have a hard time locating a teammate on any of those squads who will say a disparaging word about Bueckers, even in private. “Paige is the ultimate teammate,” Starks said. “She's the first one off the bench when kids are scoring. Sometimes I'll be tripping over her on the sidelines because she's jumping up and down because someone scored a basket, and it's genuine. She is proud and happy for her teammates.”

The feeling is mutual. Guard Kenzie Kramer of St. Michael-Albertville, herself a decorated player with a very bright future, says Bueckers does a great job of making sure that the NT crew is a team, on and off the court. “She is a star who has some of the best talent I've ever seen,” Kramer said, “but on the court she shares the ball phenomenally well, and off the court she is very humble. Paige makes everyone feel like they are just as important as her.”

What's next for the wunderkind?

So what lies ahead for Bueckers? It has been widely speculated that she will leave her talented 2020 squad and move up a year to play for Melissa Guebert on the top North Tartan 2019 squad. In fact, several people who should know told me in the past week that it was a done deal, and it's clearly what the powers that be at North Tartan would want.  

We are here to tell you that it's not going to happen. Bueckers will return to the team she has been with since elementary school as they continue their quest for greatness as a unit. “She loves her teammates and wants to play it out at her age level,” Starks said. “That's not something I'm asking her to do. That's not something her dad is telling her to do. That's something she really wants. To have a kid that young who really knows what she wants, and to go out and set an example like that says a lot about her. You have to respect that.”

As for recruiting, Bueckers is all but silent. In an era when top college prospects regularly advertise their latest offers on social media – her USA teammate Sam Brunelle announced her 'final 11' schools earlier in the week, for heaven's sake – Bueckers isn't saying a word. “I don't really share my offers or anything about my recruiting and I don't plan to,” she said. “I may take a couple of unofficial visits soon, and I might have a lot of it figured out at the end of the next AAU season.”