Now it’s about a year later, and Paige and Arcidiacono are still going at it, but in a very different arena. In fact, “arena” is overselling it. It’s the Salt Lake City Community College gym, and the fans number not in the tens of thousands, nor even in the thousands, but in the hundreds. Paige is a guard for the NBA D-League’s Salt Lake City Stars, Arcidiacono for the Austin Spurs.

It’s not exactly where Paige thought he would be at this point in his career.

“There’s a lot of things you can think about when you’re playing in an empty gym,” he says.

And that’s always been one of his…maybe not problems, because you can’t knock a guy for liking to think. (Especially these days, right?) And Paige does love to think. He loves thinking so much that he accidentally double-majored in history. He first majored in public relations at Carolina, then realized he’d taken so many history electives that he could finish up another major too. So he did.

“[People] were saying it would’ve replaced [Jordan’s] shot as the best in Tar Heel history.”

— MARCUS PAIGE

He especially likes arguing. Just for the exercise of it. “I argue about anything I can,” he says. “Even when I agree with something, I’ll play devil’s advocate. It gets on my fiancee’s nerves.”

But all of that thinking, the mental gymnastics of arguing and reasoning, can wear on you after a while. This is partially why his favorite part of a basketball game is the end.

“When the game is on the line, that’s when you just have to play,” he says. “And you can’t worry about anything else. … They used to call me Second-Half Paige. Even my sophomore year, I think I averaged 4.5 points in the first half and like 13.5 in the second.” (To be specific, he actually averaged 6.0 in the first half and 11.6 in the second and overtime, but you get the point.)

Marcus Paige brings the ball up the court during an NBA D-League game on November 15, 2016, in Oklahoma City. (Getty Images)

Anyway, because he’s polite and smart, Paige says he’s not just content but happy here in Salt Lake City. And why shouldn’t he be? He has a good contract. His fiancée, Taylor Hartzog, is here with him. The mountains that surround them are stunning. Life is good.

But it’s not the NBA, and you can’t help but wonder where he might be if Jenkins had missed his game-winning shot. In this world, maybe being seen as a legend is the boost one needs over being the guy who almost was.

One legendary shot followed by another? That kind of thing rarely happens. It requires a precise sort of voodoo. Big moment, big game, big shot. And yet it occurred in the NCAA championship game, one after the other, bang-bang.

It has happened before, someone getting Marcus Paiged in March Madness. The biggest one that comes to mind is Sean Woods. Don’t know his name? How about Christian Laettner? In that 1992 East Regional Final, the reason Duke had the ball on the baseline under Kentucky’s basket trailing 103-102 with 2.1 seconds left in overtime—that was all because Woods had just hit a clutch running floater in the lane.

“I got to be in that moment, at the pinnacle of college basketball. ... Everybody in the college basketball world wants to be there. It was fun, man.”

— MARCUS PAIGE

After the Laettner game, though, Woods didn’t play much more. He was on the Indiana Pacers’ preseason roster the next season but didn’t make the team. From there, he went into coaching, running camps and working his way through a few coaching jobs before becoming the head coach at Morehead State in 2012. He recently resigned after being accused of assaulting two of his players. Woods had a hearing scheduled for Feb. 9 that was moved to March 13. He is charged with one count of battery resulting in bodily injury, according to the Evansville, Indiana, police.

Then there was Kevin Pittsnogle, whose shot for No. 6 West Virginia in 2006’s Sweet Sixteen matchup against No. 2 Texas would’ve been plenty legendary, too. He returned from a bloodied nose to hit a three with five seconds left, tying the game at 71—only for Kenton Paulino to pull a Kris Jenkins and hit a three at the buzzer. Despite expecting to be drafted, Pittsnogle only played for various CBA and D-League teams, never making the NBA. He sold cars for a while and now teaches at the high school in Martinsburg, West Virginia.

But—and maybe this is because he is smart—Paige doesn’t think of The Shots that way, as some sort of divine doors that dictate his path in life, though he wouldn’t mind if people maybe quit asking about them so much. Everyone asks about them. Reporters slip a question in at the end of interviews. Fans at airports tell him they’ll always remember. It’s nice in a way. Like Woods, he knows he was part of a Moment, capital M.

Not to say he didn’t wish it had gone down differently.