Sue Bird peeked upcourt as she stuck the opening cross. Her Seattle Storm teammate Natasha Howard had streaked forward of her like a large receiver, as she in most cases did every time Bird was once working the offense in transition. Howard discovered that she was once open underneath the basket and braced herself. Bird, she knew, would to find her like at all times. She simply didn’t understand how.
Bird slithered into the lane, drawing a defender. Then, with out taking a look, she whipped the ball over her head and into Howard’s looking forward to hands.
“My hands were always ready for Sue when she passed me the ball,” mentioned Howard, now with the Liberty. She added: “That right there, it’s like: ‘Wow, OK, Sue. You got eyes behind your head.’”
Bird counts the cross amongst her favourite assists in her 19 seasons with the Storm. She has various passes to make a choice from: Bird is the W.N.B.A.’s occupation chief in assists.
“I have a little bit of a Rain Man brain so hold on a second,” she had mentioned as she attempted to select her favourite help. After a 2nd, she cited the no-look cross to Howard, in 2018, and a between-the-legs cross to a trailing Lauren Jackson within the 2003 All-Star Game. She wasn’t completed.
“Oh, there’s also another one to Lauren,” Bird mentioned. “It was in the playoffs against Minnesota. I think it was like 2012 and we were down 3. We needed a 3, and it wasn’t a fancy assist by any means, but we ran a play to perfection. I hit Lauren. She hits the shot.”
Those are the sorts of assists that Bird constructed her recognition on. “The timing around a great pass is so the person you’re passing to doesn’t have to change anything that they’re doing,” Bird mentioned.
At 41 years previous, Bird is inside of weeks of the top of her W.N.B.A. occupation. In June, she introduced that she would retire on the finish of the season, although most of the people had anticipated as a lot. At the top of the 2021 season, enthusiasts chanted “one more year!” at an emotional Bird and saved up the marketing campaign with hashtags on social media for months in the course of the low season. In January, Bird nodded to the marketing campaign in an Instagram submit and wrote “OK.”
Her résumé had room for another season, however simply slightly. She is a 13-time All-Star and has received 4 championships. She toppled Ticha Penicheiro’s occupation help listing of two,599 5 years in the past and now has 3,222 regular-season assists in a league-record 578 video games.
As the assists have piled up, Bird has developed as a passer.
“Every now and then, it can be fancy,” Bird mentioned. “Every now and then, you do have to look the defense off, but for me, it’s just always about trying to read the defense and be one step ahead, so you can find that person.
“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve definitely used the no-look more, and when I do a no-look nowadays, I’m not trying to look like Magic Johnson did or something like that. I’m really just trying to look off the defense. I’m just trying to get them to think my eyes are looking somewhere else, so that I can make the play.”
No different participant is as synced with the league’s infancy and expansion, its historical past and provide, as Bird, the consummate flooring normal who excelled thru consistency through handing over the ball to the precise particular person on the proper time in the precise spot, yr after yr, decade after decade.
“She is the W.N.B.A,” mentioned Crystal Langhorne, who transformed 161 of Bird’s passes into buckets, the fourth-most of any teammate in the back of Jackson (624), Breanna Stewart (345) and Jewell Loyd (217), in line with the Elias Sports Bureau. “It’s going to be crazy with a league where she’s not there anymore. Sue is the prototype.”
Hearing the ones forms of compliments has been some of the delightful and sudden byproducts of pronouncing her retirement, Bird mentioned.
“You just always knew what to expect from me,” Bird mentioned. “Everyone knew if they turned on a Storm game, what they were going to see. So, it’s kind of hard to imagine it not being there, because it’s been there for 20 years.”
Bird entered the W.N.B.A. in its 6th season as the highest total decide within the 2002 draft, sporting heavy expectancies into Seattle after two N.C.A.A. ladies’s basketball championships at Connecticut.
She made her first professional help to Adia Barnes, now the ladies’s basketball trainer at Arizona. Barnes, 45, final performed professionally 12 years in the past and spent a number of years as a broadcaster prior to training, all whilst Bird persevered stacking one help after some other.
“I totally forgot that,” Barnes mentioned of Bird’s first help, guffawing. “I made the shot, so that was a good thing. I don’t remember it, but you can act like I do. Make it sound good, please.”
Barnes does recall Bird’s balance from the start. The pair regularly roomed at the highway.
“She was just a true point guard, and I think what separated Sue is, she’s a connector, so you wanted to play with her.”
Barnes received a championship in 2004 with Bird and Jackson, who become a dynamic pick-and-roll pairing, and Bird and Jackson received some other in 2010. They left defenses helpless. If a defender ducked underneath a Jackson display, Bird may just bury a three. If they doubled Bird, Jackson may just power to the rim or come out for an open jumper. The ball most often arrived on time.
“There was really no way to help it,” Barnes mentioned. “It was just very, very, very hard to guard and they made it look seamless.”
Bird mentioned her consciousness of angles and spacing was once at all times on, even if strolling thru a mall.
“You’re always moving in a way, seeing things in way that is similar to being on the court,” Bird mentioned. “Obviously, you’re not in a game, so you’re not having to move fast or do things with urgency, but I think you just always move that way when you have that type of vision. That sounds insane. It’s actually not.”
Teammates would spot Bird sporting binders and notebooks to check the sport. “You don’t really need to ask how she does it,” Howard mentioned. “She just does it.”
Receiving a cross from Bird impressed self belief, Langhorne mentioned. Here was once some of the recreation’s greats, entrusting her with the ball and to make the precise play.
“Even when I was working on my 3s and I wasn’t as confident, if I knew Sue kicked it back to me, I was like: ‘Oh, yeah, shoot it. She’s giving it to you for a reason,’” Langhorne mentioned. “Which I never even really said out loud before.”
Injuries compelled Jackson to depart the W.N.B.A. in 2012. Bird discovered her subsequent submit spouse in Stewart, some other Connecticut product who Seattle took with the primary total decide in 2016. The two received championships in 2018 and 2020.
“She knows where everyone is supposed to be before sometimes we even do,” Stewart mentioned. “She knows which block I would prefer to get the ball on or which pass is going to get through and which isn’t. Sometimes, when you’re on the basketball court, a player makes a cut and then the pass comes, and sometimes with Sue, the pass comes and then the player makes the cut because she’s seeing the defense sometimes quicker than us.”
Bird mentioned Penicheiro, who retired in 2012, and the Chicago Sky’s Courtney Vandersloot are some of the level guards she has maximum loved staring at as a result of “they’re really fun.” Vandersloot just lately handed Lindsay Whalen to turn out to be 3rd at the W.N.B.A.’s occupation assists checklist. She’s the lively participant closest to tying Bird — and he or she’s nonetheless greater than 800 assists away.
Bird broke Penicheiro’s listing together with her 2,600th help to a chopping Carolyn Swords in 2017.
“It was actually a pretty nice pass, and she deserves it. And records are meant to be broken, and if anybody breaks your record, you want it to be a player like Sue Bird,” Penicheiro mentioned.
“Everybody loves Sue,” she added. “If she was an ass, it’d be easier to go against her and try to stick it to her, but she’s too nice and I am, too.”
Even one help from Bird is a second to keep in mind. Thirteen avid gamers gained one help from Bird, in line with Elias. The checklist contains Courtney Paris, who seemed Bird as certainly one of her favourite avid gamers rising up and spent maximum of her W.N.B.A. occupation on alert as an opponent who had the unenviable activity of looking to play staff protection towards her.
“The second you go to help, she’s going to find the smallest piece of space to get the ball to whoever needs to get it,” Paris mentioned.
Paris joined the Storm in 2018 and didn’t play regularly in her two seasons in Seattle as her taking part in occupation wound down. Paris didn’t keep in mind the kind of cross she gained from Bird or how she scored, however she recalled being excited over the collection.
“It was a full circle moment from watching her when I was a younger player,” Paris mentioned.
Ashley Walker, some other member of the one-assist from Bird membership, who performed with Seattle in 2009, was once in a similar way appreciative.
“She’s one of the pioneers,” Walker mentioned. “She’s someone that people look up to, and she did it with such grace, such confidence. And it’s just amazing to know that I’m a part of that experience and I actually get a chance to say: ‘I caught a pass from Sue Bird. What did you do?’”
Bird has additionally made her mark all over the postseason together with her assists. She set a playoff listing with 14 assists in a 2004 Western Conference finals recreation towards Sacramento, then broke it with 16 in Game 1 of the 2020 finals towards Las Vegas. Vandersloot broke that postseason listing final yr, with 18 assists towards Connecticut.
The bankruptcy is last on some of the W.N.B.A.’s maximum memorable careers. Bird mentioned she achieved the entirety she sought after to within the league, organising objectives within the second.
“The easy analogy here is, who does everybody chase in the N.B.A.? Michael Jordan,” Bird mentioned. “Because Michael Jordan played a full career. He won six rings. So, six rings became the standard. In our league, when I got into the league, that didn’t really exist.”
She persevered: “There was no real path to follow, because nobody had that 20-year career yet. So, I really didn’t know what to dream, and so to sit here now with all the championships I have, I just feel really satisfied.”
Now a tender participant — Bird named Arike Ogunbowale of the Dallas Wings for instance — can fashion the milestones within the careers of avid gamers comparable to Maya Moore and Diana Taurasi.
Many, after all, will take a look at Bird’s illustrious occupation.
“I think there is something that motivates you in that way, but at the same time, forging your own path, I enjoyed that as well,” Bird mentioned. “I’m not sure. Maybe having something to chase is better. Maybe there’s more pressure.”