The WNBA simply accomplished the 2025 season, and lots of are questioning who’s the “New Face” of the subsequent era because the league ushers in a brand new period. Whereas there are numerous attractive solutions and decisions to depict, Dallas Wings’ mesmerizing rookie Paige Bueckers might have one thing to say about it. Within the first half, we analyzed her historic record-breaking rookie season numerically.
Nevertheless, understanding the hierarchy of a league requires extra than simply numerical knowledge. Let’s dive into the opposite qualities of what makes Bueckers uniquely particular as the way forward for the WNBA.
Turning into the face of a sport requires extra than simply having an elite sport on the sector or courtroom. Folks have to have the ability to resonate and gravitate towards you. They need to have the ability to see you in commercials on their flat-screen televisions or on retailer cabinets; this could even entice informal followers to find out about you and your persona.
Bueckers has quite a few model partnerships as one of many main faces of the subsequent era of WNBA stars, in addition to a powerful sponsorship portfolio. These partnerships embody Nike, Gatorade, Verizon, and Dunkin’, to call only a few. She was the primary NIL-era faculty athlete to design a Nike shoe together with her Paige Bueckers G.T. Hustle 3 sneakers.
“It’s positively motivating to put on your personal shoe,” Paige says. “I grew up sporting Nikes — all of the signature sneakers — so it’s surreal to have this Participant Version mannequin. I simply need to present out in it.”
Bueckers additionally grew to become the first collegiate athlete to have possession fairness within the Unequalled Basketball League, which grants house owners a 10-15% stake. In November 2021, she additionally signed a take care of Gatorade, making her the primary collegiate athlete ever to take action.
She has been featured in Nike commercials sporting her new sneakers, drinks Gatorade to remain hydrated, and is the pinnacle of CeraVe, a skincare model that focuses on haircare. Bueckers has limitless entry to the advertising world, and she or he’s simply getting began.
Paige Bueckers is a generational chief
In crew sports activities, you could develop into a participant. Unselfishness is required to attain the last word objective: profitable and competing for a championship. Bueckers has been praised all through her profession for being a constructive teammate on and off the courtroom. Throughout her UConn days, there have been quite a few tales of management.
Whether or not that was waking up earlier than daybreak to cook dinner breakfast for her Muslim teammate, Jana El Rafy, throughout Ramadan when she was fasting from dawn to sundown, or flying to Florida to be together with her teammate Caroline Ducharme as she underwent therapy for a major head and neck damage.
For Bueckers, demonstrating selflessness is easy, and when your prime participant exemplifies this, it positively impacts the complete crew. She demonstrated the identical traits on the WNBA degree when.
After a loss to the Indiana Fever, she caught up for her teammate Arike Ogunbowale, who had a poor capturing efficiency, and praised Ogunbowale’s defensive effort in the course of the sport. A rookie sticking up for her teammate when the coach didn’t exemplifies a real chief.
After getting into the WNBA with as a lot anticipated hype as any prospect within the league’s historical past, Bueckers has justified that and extra with a record-breaking rookie marketing campaign. Attributable to her elite all-around sport, marketability, and gravitational pull as a frontrunner and supreme chief, she has all of the instruments and traits to develop into “The Face of the WNBA.”
