Bueckers ignites Unrivaled win, detailing the unique pressure and intensity that sets this league apart from the WNBA's familiar landscape.
Paige Bueckers’ assessment of Unrivaled landed with unusual clarity because it comes from someone who has already lived inside the three-on-three game.
In a postgame conversation with Candace Parker following her Unrivaled debut, Bueckers spoke candidly about the physical and mental reality of the league’s format. Her comments resonated not as first impressions from a newcomer, but as a refinement from a player with one of the deepest 3x3 résumés of her generation.
She began with the most immediate adjustment she felt on the floor.
“Yeah, I think the physicality, one,” Bueckers said. “We all know that the W is physical, but Unrivaled, I feel, is even more physical than that.”
From there, she pointed to the defining difference that separates Unrivaled from five-on-five basketball.
“And then not being able to have help side, you're basically on an island,” Bueckers said. “So at points, you're gonna have to be okay with getting cooked.”
That reality is not foreign to Bueckers. Long before Unrivaled launched, she had already built extensive experience in high-stakes 3x3 environments with USA Basketball, often competing against older, more physically mature opponents.
Her 3x3 background is headlined by a gold medal at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, where she helped lead the U.S. girls’ team to a 7–0 record in the tournament. Bueckers served as a primary creator in that event, operating in the faster-paced format that emphasized spacing, isolation scoring and late-clock decision-making.
That same year, she won the USA Basketball 3x3 U18 National Championship alongside Aliyah Boston, Samantha Brunelle and Hailey Van Lith, and added titles at the Spokane Hoopfest 3x3 tournament and the Latvia U17 International Invitational. Those performances accelerated her rise within USA Basketball’s pipeline.
In 2019, Bueckers became the youngest member of the senior U.S. women’s 3x3 national team at the ANOC World Beach Games in Doha. Playing alongside established professionals such as Napheesa Collier and Jackie Young, she averaged 6.5 points per game — second on the team — as the United States finished fifth after a quarterfinal loss to Brazil. That same year, she was named USA Basketball Female Athlete of the Year, with her 3x3 success cited as a major factor.
That history adds weight to how Bueckers framed Unrivaled’s defensive demands.
“You wear defense with pride and try to just defend on the island and guard your yard and keep people in front of you,” she said. “But at the same time, these are the best women in the world, and you're competing against them, so that's a lot different, for sure.”
Unrivaled strips away schematic cover in a way even elite international 3x3 competitions often soften with familiarity. With only three players on the floor and constant spacing, defensive assignments are exposed immediately. There is no rotation to lean on and no possession to recover mentally.
For Bueckers, that exposure is not a shock but an evolution. USA Basketball has long highlighted her 3x3 background as sharpening her playmaking, spacing reads and late-clock shot creation — traits that carried through UConn and into the professional game. Unrivaled intensifies those same demands by pairing elite skill with relentless physicality.
Her comments underscored that the league’s design is intentional. Being isolated is not a flaw to be managed. It is the test itself.
Even for a player shaped by years of 3x3 competition at the highest levels, Unrivaled still pushes the edges of comfort. And as Bueckers made clear, embracing that discomfort is part of why the league matters — and why it fits her game so naturally.