Paige Bueckers
Image credit - Flickr/Paige Bueckers
Team USA’s bus rides through Berlin were never going to be boring, not with this much personality packed onto one roster. A viral seating game just proved it, revealing exactly who wants company and who wants space.
Paige Bueckers named her pick, and her pass, without hesitation. She wants Chelsea Gray next to her, the veteran point guard she idolized growing up in Minnesota. Everyone else got a green light, except one teammate.
“I would sit next to everybody, but Soni,” Bueckers said, referring to Sonia Citron.
That exclusion wasn’t one-sided. Citron played it right back at her.
“Kiki or Paige,” Citron said, naming her preferred seatmates. “*Who would I not pick? Also Paige, actually.*”
It’s the kind of contradiction that only makes sense inside a locker room this close. Citron and Bueckers clearly get along fine off the bus. Angel Reese kept things simple, refusing to play favorites at all.
“I would sit next to everybody on the bus, honestly,” Reese said.
Breanna Stewart went a different direction, pairing her Chelsea Gray pick with a pointed exclusion of her own.
“Probably Chelsea,” Stewart said. “*Not sit next to me? Paige or AB.*”
Caitlin Clark kept her answer short, tapping Aliyah Boston as her go-to. Boston returned the favor, choosing Clark right back while admitting she is generally picky about company.
“I don’t like everybody,” Boston said, only half joking.
Jackie Young stuck close to her usual routine, sitting with Chelsea Gray again, and said she is easygoing enough to sit by anybody else on the roster.
Kahleah Copper had the most detailed answer of the group, and it wasn’t subtle about who exhausts her.
“Angel going to talk my ear off,” Copper said. “*Or be trying to beat me up, or hit my chair or something annoying.*”
She singled out Bueckers too, joking that the Dallas Wings guard never runs out of things to say on a long ride.
Kiki Iriafen closed the loop by picking Citron as her seatmate, framing it as a natural choice given their partnership together with the Washington Mystics.
“I’m definitely gonna pick Sonia Citron because we are teammates in the W,” Iriafen said. “*She’ll probably be a little annoyed and try to get away from me.*”
Chelsea Gray Is the Bus’s Most Wanted Seat
Three separate players, Bueckers, Stewart and Young, all reached for Gray first. At 33, she is the oldest player on this roster and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, the kind of steady presence a bus full of young stars naturally gravitates toward.
Bueckers has been open about that admiration before. She has said she grew up watching Gray star for the Sparks and Lynx, never expecting to one day share a locker room with her. Getting to learn from her up close now, Bueckers has admitted, still feels a little surreal.
That kind of respect matters more than usual on this roster. Six of the twelve players on Team USA are under 25, and seven are making their senior national team debut in Berlin. A’ja Wilson and Kelsey Plum, two of the group’s most experienced voices, are both sidelined by injury before the tournament even tips off.
Veterans like Gray are being asked to do more than score. Coach Kara Lawson has called this the toughest World Cup field the program has ever faced, which makes the little things, who you trust on a bus, who talks too much, who keeps things calm, carry a bit more weight than usual.
The seating game is a light moment before a heavy stretch. Team USA opens the tournament against China on Friday, then faces Czechia and Italy to close group play.
Bus chemistry doesn’t win basketball games by itself. But on a team replacing this much experience on short notice, knowing who to trust in a tight seat isn’t nothing. Berlin will decide soon enough whether any of it translates to the scoreboard.