The Charlotte 49ers have a new assistant basketball coach this season.

His name will be familiar to anyone who follows UNC basketball.

Marcus Paige was a standout point guard for UNC from 2012 to 2016 and graduated from the school as its all-time leader in three-pointers. Now 33, he’s not the youngest person we’ve ever interviewed for the “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” series, but it’s close.

A three-time captain in UNC, Paige made one of the most well-known shots in school history in the national championship game vs. Villanova in 2016.

Paige was on Hubert Davis’s coaching staff at UNC last season, but wasn’t retained by new coach Michael Malone after Davis was fired following the Tar Heels’ first-round flameout in the 2026 NCAA Tournament.

Paige now works under another former Tar Heel, Wes Miller, on the Charlotte staff. On Tuesday, Paige’s two worlds collide, as his 49ers travel to Chapel Hill to play UNC in a 7:30 p.m. exhibition game in the Smith Center.

“Going in there without Carolina Blue on, it’s going to be weird,” Paige said. “But it’s very cool.”

Our full conversation can be found on the “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” podcast. Here are some excerpts, edited for clarity and brevity.

Scott Fowler: I would imagine it’s been a whirlwind year for you. What’s it been like?

Marcus Paige: Crazy. If you had asked me half a year ago where I’d be, I don’t know if I would have predicted this correctly.

But it’s been really fun. We had a really good team at Carolina (in 2025-26), and then Caleb Wilson got hurt and kind of derailed what our plans were for that year…. Then, kind of being in flux, and then finding what I think is an awesome opportunity here in Charlotte has been a lot for me and my family.

But it’s been fun and it’s an exciting new challenge and we’re still in the state of North Carolina, which I consider my second home. So there’s a lot of good. I think me and my family are very excited about it.

SF: We’re doing this interview at Halton Arena, the Charlotte 49ers’ home. What are your primary responsibilities on Wes Miller’s staff?

MP: This is Year One of Coach Miller’s tenure here. I feel like my responsibilities are everything, just because we’re trying to figure it out. But I will be doing a lot of the recruiting. And in terms of an assistant coach, I’ll be focusing on the offensive side of the ball, and doing whatever I can to help assist Coach and in building what we want to think of as a championship culture here.

SF: Tell me about life growing up for you.

MP: I’m from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Both my parents played small-college basketball at a school called Mount Mercy (in Iowa).

My sister is 15 months older than me and she’s also a coach: Morgan Paige. She’s the head coach at Loyola University Chicago. She just got the head coaching job there this summer. She was the associate head coach at Kansas the last few years.

Coaching runs in the family. My mom coached my sister in high school, and then my dad kind of coached me growing up. So we all just love basketball. It’s kind of the connective tissue and common thread that runs through our family. It bonds us.

SF: Iowa is a long way from Chapel Hill. What made you decide to go to UNC?

MP: Roy Williams is a big factor in that. I was fortunate enough to get recruited pretty heavily in the Midwest early in my high school career. My AAU coach, Hank Huddleston, has had five players play for Coach Williams now (including Williams’ time at Kansas). And some of Coach’s favorites, too: Kirk Hinrich, Raef LaFrentz, Nick Collison…. So he kind of helped get that relationship started.

I almost committed to Kansas. But when I went to Chapel Hill, I just felt like it was home. I clicked with the players. And I knew I was going to play behind Kendall Marshall for a few years. But that didn’t end up happening.

SF: Right. You thought you’d be getting 5-10 minutes a game as a freshman. What happened?

MP: Kendall ended up being a lottery pick. So it went from, “Hey Marcus, we’re gonna ease you into this” to “You’ve got to be ready to go.” Which I was not. I was not very good.

SF: Why not?

MP: I just needed more time to develop. It’s a big jump. The pace and physicality in which North Carolina teams play is very demanding, and I was a 160-pound freshman without the physicality or the conditioning level to really sustain long periods of that.

SF: You took a big leap in your sophomore year, averaging 17.5 points per game. Why?

MP: Well, the first thing is that I grew through struggle. I’m a big believer that repetition doesn’t necessarily facilitate growth, but struggle does. It gives you more to learn from, more to draw from, and then the work that you put in the summer is what gives you the confidence.

So I was fortunate enough to have a ton of experience and fail a lot as a freshman. By the end of my freshman year, I felt like I knew what I was doing. And then I had a whole summer and offseason where I just lived in the gym. I had a few great games early, and my confidence kind of snowballed.

SF: In 2016, you made a double-clutch jumper against Villanova to tie the national championship game with 4.7 seconds left.

In a previous “Sports Legends” interview, I asked Roy Williams to rank the following three famous UNC basketball shots in order: Michael Jordan’s jumper that won the national title in 1982, Luke Maye’s shot to beat Kentucky in 2017 in the NCAA tourney and your shot.

He ended up putting yours at No. 1, because of its degree of difficulty. Where would you put it?

MP: Oh, I think context matters.

The shot itself was pretty cool. I haven’t tried to recreate it because I don’t want to miss it. I’m not gonna make it again, so I just leave it as the pristine shot that it was.

I actually thought it was gonna miss. It looked like it was going left a little bit.

But I would say Michael Jordan’s shot is first, just because it contributed directly to them winning a national championship. Luke’s shot was about as close to a buzzer beater as you can get. So I put myself third.

But I still think it was pretty cool. There’s nothing wrong with being third on that list.

SF: Right after your shot, Villanova goes down and gets a buzzer-beater from Kris Jenkins to win the title. How did that happen?

MP: Our thought process, I think, got a little bit miscommunicated from the huddle to the floor in terms of our pickup point. Obviously, we had somebody at the goal. We needed to build our defense out a little bit more.

But again, in those moments, it’s hard. One little tiny detail can be the difference in everything. We don’t ever assign responsibility (for the defensive error).

Then, the way in Houston that the football stadium (where the 2016 national title game was played) is set up, it is an impossibly long walk back to the locker room. I don’t remember a single second of it. Everything kind of goes dark in that moment. You see everything that you worked for just being yanked from you, right next to the elation of the other group.

SF: That was the last shot of your college career. Where did your basketball career take you after that?

MP: Obviously, my teammates went on to win a national championship the next year (in 2017), which was very cool to see.

I was drafted in the second round by the Utah Jazz, and then spent most of the year in the D League. It was the D League at the time and now it’s the G League: That’s how old I’m getting. From there, I ended up getting a two-way (NBA) contract with Charlotte the next year, before playing five years in Europe.

SF: You played in five games with the Charlotte Hornets in 2017-18, and a lot more games with the Greensboro Swarm. What was your brief NBA experience like?

MP: It was special. It was cool. You look at the stats and it says you played five games, but I was with the team (but on the bench) for 30-40 games. So that whole experience with Coach Cliff (Steve Clifford), Marvin Williams, Kemba Walker — a great group to be around. To have a year in the NBA is something that you work your whole life for, and something that’s helped me in the rest of my life.

At the same time, it was frustrating. It was hard. There are maybe 400-500 spots in the NBA but a couple of thousand guys who are deserving. It’s an exclusive club. Time, opportunity, circumstances — they all factor in. I did have nine points in an NBA game once, so I can laugh with some of my friends, “Hey, I’ve got the same career high as you! But I only had five games and you had five years.”

SF: And what was your overseas experience like after that?

MP: I played three years in Belgrade (Serbia) for Partizan — 20,000 fans every game. A really special basketball region and one of the most fun experiences of my life. We loved it. Then a year in France, and a year in Spain.

I had multiple shoulder dislocations that kind of derailed things, and it got to the point where I felt my body breaking down a little bit.

I’m not the biggest guy in the world, and I knew that there were some opportunities that were popping up in the coaching world, which I kind of felt myself gravitating toward. But I don’t feel a ton of regret or anything that I didn’t keep playing longer. I have some friends that are gonna play until the wheels fall off, and I’m happy for them. I don’t think physically that I was gonna be capable of doing that.

SF: Your wife Taylor went to UNC too, and you met her there, right?

MP: Yeah so we were partners on “Late Night with Roy.” We used to do dance skits. We got partnered up sophomore year of college. It was random. Got to know each other that week, started dating and here we are, nine years of marriage later. (The couple has a two-year-old daughter).

SF: When Hubert Davis and the rest of the Tar Heel basketball coaches were suddenly fired following UNC losing its first-round NCAA Tournament game, was that the first time you’ve been fired in your life?

MP: I would consider the first time I got fired when I got cut from the Utah Jazz and sent to the D League.

But yes, it was difficult. Obviously, some guys have had that happen before…. I think it was, just for me, more like soaking in the experience.

I know that sounds crazy, but like it’s the very beginning of my coaching career. It’s probably not the last time it’s going to happen if I’m going to be in this for a while.

The good thing is that I can’t hold any hostility towards the university because I love it… My player threads run deeper than anything, and when we get a chance, I’ll root them on and hope that someday we can add another banner in the Smith Center.

SF: How did you know Coach Miller? Your times at UNC didn’t overlap.

MP: He’s best friends with a few people that I worked with previously, including Sean May. But really just on the road, getting to talk to him at some of the recruiting events, realizing that our values aligned and our philosophies were something that we could draw from each other on.

When he called me, I was thrilled. It all kind of came together very quickly. We like to say the Carolina family is one big family, and this is an example of the way it really is. We take care of each other.

SF: I know it’s really early, but what kind of team do you think the Charlotte 49ers will have this year?

MP: I’m very excited for this group. I think we’re deep, and I think we have a lot of skill and positional size. I’ve been very, very pleased with what I’ve seen so far.

SF: Do you still scrimmage in practice against the Charlotte 49ers players?

MP: Scrimmaging is tough. I’ll mix it up a little bit in the workouts when I’m working the guys out, to give them some resistance. But going up and down, I can’t. I don’t have the cardio anymore for that.

SF: What will returning to the Smith Center be like with the 49ers, in the visiting locker room?

MP: Going in there without Carolina Blue on, it’s going to be weird. But it’s very cool. Obviously, Coach (Miller) won a national championship at North Carolina. We both hold that place deep in our hearts, and so there’ll be some emotions.

But I think it’ll be a cool experience for our guys. We’ve put together a good team…. We wanted to give them that experience of “Hey, this is what we’re striving for. We’re striving for the blue bloods, right?”

So I’m excited. And once the game starts, it’s basketball.

The continuing “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” series, which has interviewed more than 50 legends with Carolina ties so far, is also available wherever you get your podcasts.

This story was originally published October 27, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Marcus Paige opens up on UNC, the Charlotte 49ers and his most famous shot."