Carolina fans love Marcus Paige.

That’s one of the overwhelming takeaways from the Rams Club’s recent member survey, which saw Paige bring in more votes across multiple categories than any other individual Tar Heel.

Members had Paige as the runaway winner in “Most likely to be President.” He was the clear pick in “Most likely to be your boss.” He was the easy first place selection for “Most likely to be a coach.”

But one of the most unique parts about the way fans adore Paige — and perhaps what makes him even more endearing — is he received exactly zero votes for top male athlete.

That was a category dominated by the athletic marvels like Michael Jordan, Tyler Hansbrough and Julius Peppers.

We have never been particularly awed by him. He did not jump the highest or hang in the air the longest (except for that unforgettable shot against Villanova in 2016, which was the only moment to get multiple votes in “Favorite Carolina sports moment” in which the Tar Heels did not actually win the game in question). His senior year, he probably wasn’t the best player in his apartment; his roommate, Brice Johnson, had a dominant final season at Carolina. But there has always been that general sense that, if we could be a Tar Heel, we would probably try to do it like Marcus Paige did it.

It is jarring to realize that Paige enrolled at Carolina over a decade ago. He turns 30 this year—yes, Marcus Paige is about to be 30 years old—and repeated shoulder injuries have him asking tough questions about the lifespan of his professional basketball career. A season in Europe can feel even longer than a season in America, and Paige has played six of them abroad.

There’s the basketball, of course. Paige’s time on the hardwood has been complicated by repeated shoulder injuries, the most recent of which happened this season, when he was playing in Spain. But there are also the cultural adjustments. Paige and his wife—Taylor, a former member of the Tar Heel dance team—got married at 24 years old. That means in addition to all the other newlywed adjustments and just out of college adjustments, they’ve also had to do it all while living in a foreign country and speaking very little of whatever the local language might be.

There have been welcome breaks, including catching up with other Tar Heels living the overseas basketball lifestyle. Paige played against Luke Maye in Spain this year, and has connected with Brice Johnson, Isaiah Hicks, and James Michael McAdoo. He even found that, despite the time difference, Carolina game days often became an important part of the routine.

“I always thought that once the freshmen from my team graduated, I wouldn’t watch as much. But then the Covid year, the games were starting at 3 a.m. my time, there was no one in the gym, and I was completely locked in. They would lose games on a buzzer beater and I would go crazy. That’s when I realized I’m never going away from Carolina. Six years later, I’m still texting my former teammates and B-Rob (Brandon Robinson) about the games. I’m just as into it as I was ten years ago.”

But those Tar Heel game breaks are usually the exception rather than the rule. There’s a reason why Carolina alums playing abroad prize those games so highly; it’s a slice of normalcy in a life that is very different from the one they knew at home.

“The best way to live life like this is to throw yourself into it and embrace it,” he says. “There’s a lot of down time. It’s easy to get caught up in wanting to be back home, and missing holidays and weddings and birthdays. If you don’t throw yourself into the culture, you’re basically going to be depressed, and there have been moments I have felt that way.

“The moments I have been happiest is when I try new places or new food with Taylor or we go out with teammates. The interactions with the people are what make it special. Now I have friends who speak all these different languages and live all around the world and I will always be able to call on them and can call them real friends. If you apply that philosophy, you will have a blast. But there is a certain fatigue with playing overseas. At some point, you miss being home in the big picture. I’ve always known I’m not going to be a 19 years overseas guy.”

His timeline may have been changed by his most recent shoulder injury. That one came with surgery and a six-month recovery timeline. He returned to Chapel Hill to have surgery, and then his team allowed him to spend several weeks of the rehabilitation process in the United States.

That gave him plenty of time to spend in Chapel Hill during a month of the 2022-23 basketball season, when he was a regular around the Tar Heel basketball office and was a frequent practice attendee. He even sat next to Roy Williams at a Carolina home game, a very different perspective than Paige received when he was on the court playing for the Hall of Famer.

“I’ve always had people tell me I’d be good doing TV or radio or something where I’m speaking or interacting with the camera,” Paige said. “But I’m too in love with the game to not be hands-on. I’ve felt myself being more attracted to trying to be a coach. Both my parents coach high school basketball, and my sister is an assistant coach at Kansas. Every day she tells me how much she loves it.

“So maybe I’ll follow in the family footsteps and try to get a coaching gig. I spent a lot of time around Coach Davis and the staff this year trying to get a feel for the ins and outs of what college basketball coaching looks like. It was basically a mini job shadow.”

If and when he makes a move into coaching, he’ll bring with him a 360-degree perspective that goes far beyond basketball. Strictly on the court, he now possesses a much more diverse hoops education.

“Basketball is so global now,” Paige says. “As a basketball junkie, seeing all the different styles as we’ve traveled the world is amazing. I played for one of the best coaches in Europe when I was in Serbia, and I got to understand the game from his perspective. I went to Spain and saw how they use different tactics and see the game differently. I went to France. I was exposed to so many different ways to see the game, and it’s helped me a lot.”

And off the court, his time away from Chapel Hill and personal
maturation—for a person who was already incredibly mature even
when he arrived as a freshman—means he has a much more advanced
understanding of what college basketball players are experiencing.

Recall that Paige’s time in Chapel Hill ran concurrently with some of the most turbulent times in the history of Carolina athletics, with investigations and constant questions about the department’s academic standards. Paige wasn’t even in high school when most of the events in question happened. But as the flagship Tar Heel athlete during the investigation, he became the constant spokesman even on issues he didn’t fully understand.

“I was doing every interview and talking about things I didn’t really know about,” he says. “It was a lot. If I could do it again, I would have taken better care of myself on the inside. I would have seen a sports psychologist or a therapist. Therapy wasn’t the same ten or 15 years ago as it is now. I would’ve processed it better.

“It wasn’t until I was removed from it for several years that I realized I was carrying a big burden. It can affect you in ways that surface in other areas of life. In college, there were times I wasn’t making time for the people who are important, because I was exhausted. I didn’t want to have to exert myself and talk about how frustrated I really was with something. You only have so much in your emotional tank as a 21-year-old. You also have exams and essays to write. I put so much into all of that that I was empty for other aspects of my life. As a 29-year-old, I understand that a lot more. At the time, I didn’t realize I had an empty emotional tank. I was just tired. As you get older, you get wiser, and I apply that to my life now.”

Spoken just like someone who—as Tar Heel fans predicted—could easily be a coach one day. Or, perhaps, your boss. Or maybe the President.