Paige Bueckers on Apple TV UConn documentary: ‘Our team approved it’

It’s becoming quite rare these days for any sports documentary to get made without some level of editorial approval from the subjects themselves.

Whether that means these projects should be called documentaries at all is certainly a discussion worth having. But there’s a real access problem in the sports documentary world right now. Athletes demand influence over how their stories are told, and if a filmmaker refuses, the athlete simply won’t participate in the project. After all, there are plenty of other filmmakers who are willing to work with the athlete on their terms.

So it didn’t come as much of a surprise when Dallas Wings star Paige Bueckers accidentally said the quiet part out loud this weekend when she was asked about the recently released Apple TV documentary chronicling UConn women’s basketball’s historic 40-year run.

“Yeah, I got to watch it,” Bueckers said, per WNBA reporter Christian Braswell. “Our team approved it and stuff like that. Obviously, like you said, I lived it and was a part of it, but to have it on film, to have it kind of be documented and to see other people. For me, it was like I wanted other people to see that it’s not always beautiful. Like, we won the national championship at the end, but the adversity, the hard times, the days where you don’t want to show up anymore. Like, that’s real. So to be human, to embrace that and really just fight through adversity, like that’s what life is about and how it took a village. It wasn’t just me. There were so many teammates and coaches, strength and conditioning staff, my doctors who helped me recover from my injuries. Like it really takes a village and to have a great faith, a great determination to have great people around you. I think that’s what it was all about.”

Now, it’s unclear what exactly Bueckers means by “our team approved it.” She could mean that UConn initially approved the project, which would be a prerequisite for any project involving a team with any level of access. Many, however, have interpreted her comments to mean one of two things: UConn was able to view and approve the project after it was finished, or Bueckers’ own team was able to view and approve the project.

In either case, it’s not something most documentary subjects would readily admit. There’s at least supposed to be some semblance of independence between the filmmakers and subjects. And if Bueckers’ own team was granted access to watch the project before its release, that likely means other former UConn stars were afforded the same opportunity.

Unfortunately, this seems to be reality for most sports documentaries these days.

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