Another step forward
Bueckers adds Crocs footwear to NIL portfolio
Paige Bueckers’ everexpanding marketing platform now includes another high-profile product endorsement.
One year into the era of name, image and likeness and halfway through her UConn career, Bueckers has added a sponsorship deal with Crocs, a popular brand of footwear.
“Entering the @Crocs chat,” she wrote on Instagram. “#Crocs #crocsambassador.” Bueckers, 20, was one of the initial leading faces of NIL and continues to be. Since a law went into effect July 1 allowing college athletes to profit in such ways, Bueckers has signed deals with Gatorade, StockX, Chegg and now Crocs — which had previously partnered with South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston.
With unprecedented exposure in high school followed by her national player of the year performance as a freshman in 2000-21, Bueckers has quickly become one of the most recognizable players in women’s basketball and one of the most marketable in college athletics.
She has filed a trademark that would allow exclusively use of her nickname, “Paige Buckets,” and has 1 million followers on Instagram.
The lives of some college athletes have changed dramatically.
While it’s impossible to know how much money Bueckers, of suburban Minneapolis, is making unless she decides to share that information, she has aligned herself with top national brands at the heart of aggressive campaigns.
Because of her success and popularity, she has also entered exclusive celebrity circles in a world previously more divided from college athletics. After the Warriors’ victory over the Celtics in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Friday night in Boston, Paige and teammate Azzi Fudd hung around TD Garden and met with Warriors players Draymond Green and Steph Curry, according to a video posted on YouTube.
“You’ve got to come to UConn,” Bueckers told Green, who replied, “I would love to. It would be hard to get to Storrs, but I will. You’ve got my word. I definitely will.”
Fudd has an NIL deal with Curry’s SC30 Inc.
Curry, who had 43 points in the game, said to Fudd, “Great to see you, too. Tell your parents I said what’s up.”
Bueckers is one of just a handful of players cleared for full basketball activity during UConn’s ongoing summer session workouts. She sustained knee injuries in early December that required surgery and was limited to just 17 games last season but returned to lead UConn past NC State in a double-overtime Elite Eight thriller and wound up averaging a team-high 14.6 points.
Bueckers is represented by Wasserman, the same agency representing Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart.
UConn coach Geno Auriemma met the media last week and said he told Bueckers she needs to remain on campus for the entirety of the offseason
with the goal of getting stronger and working toward being able to endure the body stress that her style of play demands.
“She’s one that’s a little bit different in the sense that she loves to work out, she loves to play, more than anything,” Auriemma said. “She wants to be in practice for two hours. In the game she wants to play 40 minutes. And when she plays, she’s not the kind that just runs back on defense and just stands there. She’s involved . ... She’s active on the offensive end, on the defensive end, but her body isn’t built to be like that.”
Bueckers dealt with lower body injuries throughout her senior year at Hopkins High. Last year at this time, she was still on crutches, recovering from ankle surgery that followed her freshman season. And more than two and a half months of last season were lost to her latest injury.
“I said, ‘Listen Paige, I know normally you would
go home, but July, August, after you do your thing, you’re not going anywhere,’ ” Auriemma said. “‘You need to get your body ready to withstand the way you want to play.’ And if you watch us play, nobody gets fouled more than she does. Nobody gets bumped off her cuts, nobody gets hit more. And like every other good player we’ve ever had, most of the officials go, ‘She can handle it.’ So they don’t want to call anything because they don’t want to go, ‘That’s preferential treatment for Paige.’ No, it’s called protecting the guy with the ball or protecting the guy trying to get open on the wing, whatever the case may be. She needs to be strong enough to withstand all that.”
Auriemma added, “So Paige has got a busy summer coming up. Plus all the other stuff, you know? I said, ‘Paige, you do a lot for a lot of people. I think it’s time to start doing a lot of stuff for yourself.’ ”