Sue Bird peered up as she caught the outlet pass. Her Seattle Storm teammate, Natasha Howard, had rushed ahead of her like a wide receiver, as she typically did when Bird was leading the offense in the transition phase. Howard noticed it was open under the basket and braced himself. Bird, she knew, would find her, as always. She just didn’t know how.
Bird skidded into the alley and attracted a defender. Then, without looking, she whipped the ball over her head and into Howard’s waiting palms.
“My hands were always ready for Sue when she passed the ball to me,” said Howard, who now plays with the Liberty. She added, “That right there is like, ‘Wow, OK, Sue. You have eyes behind your head.’”
Bird cites the pass as one of her favorite assists of her 19 seasons with The Storm. She has many passes to choose from: Bird is the WNBA’s career assists guide.
“I’ve got a bit of a Rain Man brain, so hold on,” she’d said while trying to pick her favorite assist. After a second, she cited the no-look pass to Howard in 2018 and a between-the-legs pass to a trailing Lauren Jackson in the 2003 All-Star Game. She wasn’t done yet.
“Oh, Lauren has another one,” Bird said. “That was in the playoffs against Minnesota. I think it was like 2012 and we were 3 behind. We needed a 3 and it wasn’t a fancy assist by any means, but we made a game perfect. I hit Lauren. She hits the shot.”
These are the types of assists that Bird has built their reputation on. “The timing of a great pass is such that the person you’re passing doesn’t have to change anything they’re doing,” Bird said.
At 41, Bird is just weeks from the end of her WNBA career. In June, she announced that she would be retiring at the end of the season, although most were expecting it. At the end of the 2021 season, fans chanted “another year!” at an emotional bird and kept the campaign running through the off-season for months with hashtags on social media. In January, Bird nodded to the campaign in an Instagram post, writing “OK.”
Her resume had room for another season, but only just. She is a 13-time All-Star and has won four championships. Five years ago, she broke Ticha Penicheiro’s career record of 2,599 assists and now has 3,222 regular-season assists in a league record 578 games.
As assists have piled up, Bird has evolved as a passer.
“It can be fancy every once in a while,” Bird said. “Sometimes you have to fend off the defense, but for me it’s just always about reading the defense and being one step ahead so you can find that person.
“As I got older, I definitely used the no-look more, and when I do a no-look these days, I’m not trying to look like Magic Johnson or anything. I’m really just trying to look away from defense. I’m just trying to get them to think my eyes are looking somewhere else so I can do the piece.”
No other player is more in sync with the league’s beginnings and growth, its past and present, as Bird, the consummate hall general who excelled at consistency, putting the ball in the right place at the right time, to the right person year after year . decade after decade.
“She’s the WNBA,” said Crystal Langhorne, who converted 161 of Bird’s passes into buckets, the fourth most of any teammate behind Jackson (624), Breanna Stewart (345) and Jewell Loyd (217), according to Elias Sports. Office. “It’s going to be crazy with a league she’s out of. Sue is the prototype.”
Hearing those kinds of compliments was one of the pleasant and unexpected by-products of announcing her retirement, Bird said.
“You just always knew what to expect from me,” Bird said. “Everyone knew what they would see when they turned on a Storm game. So it’s hard to imagine it’s not there because it’s been there for 20 years.”
Entering the sixth season of the WNBA as the top pick overall in the 2002 draft, Bird brought great expectations to Seattle after two NCAA women’s basketball championships in Connecticut.
She made her first pro assist for Adia Barnes, now the Arizona women’s basketball coach. Barnes, 45, last played professionally 12 years ago and spent several years as a broadcaster before training while Bird continued to stack assist after assist.
“I totally forgot about that,” Barnes said, laughing at Bird’s first assist. “I took the shot, so that was a good thing. I don’t remember, but you can act like me. Please make it sound good.”
Barnes recalls Bird’s consistency from the start. The couple often lived on the street.
“She was just a real point guard, and I think what a separate Sue is, she’s a connection, so you wanted to play with her.”
Barnes won a championship in 2004 with Bird and Jackson becoming a dynamic pick and roll pair, and Bird and Jackson won another in 2010. They left the defense helpless. If a defender ducked under a Jackson screen, Bird could bury a 3. If they doubled Bird, Jackson could drive to the rim or pop out for an open jumper. The ball usually arrived on time.
“There was really no way to change it,” Barnes said. “It was just very, very, very difficult to guard and they made it look seamless.”
Bird said her awareness of angles and distances is always active, even when walking through a mall.
“You’re always moving in a way, looking at things as if you’re standing on the pitch,” Bird said. “Obviously you’re not in a game, so you don’t have to act fast or do things with urgency, but I think you just always move like that when you have that kind of vision. That sounds crazy. Not really.”
Teammates spotted Bird carrying binders and notebooks to study the game. “You don’t really need to ask how she does it,” Howard said. “She just does it.”
Receiving a pass from Bird instilled confidence, Langhorne said. Here was one of the greats of the game who trusted her with the ball and made the right play.
“Even when I was working on my 3 Series and I wasn’t that confident, when I knew Sue was throwing it back at me I was like, ‘Oh yeah, shoot it. She’s giving it to you for a reason,’” Langhorne said. “Which I’ve never really said out loud.”
Injuries forced Jackson to leave the WNBA in 2012. Bird found their next postal partner in Stewart, another Connecticut product that Seattle won in 2016 with its first overall win. The two won championships in 2018 and 2020.
“She knows where everyone’s supposed to be before we do sometimes,” Stewart said. “She knows which block I’d most like to get the ball on or which pass gets through and which doesn’t. Sometimes when you’re on the court a player makes a cut and then the pass comes, and sometimes Sue makes the pass and then the player makes the cut because sometimes she sees the defense quicker than we do.”
Bird said Penicheiro, who retired in 2012, and Chicago Sky’s Courtney Vandersloot are among her favorite point guards because “they’re really fun.” Vandersloot recently passed Lindsay Whalen to finish third on the WNBA career assists list. She’s the closest active player to Bird — and she’s still more than 800 assists away.
Bird broke Penicheiro’s record with her 2,600. Submission for a cutting Carolyn Swords in 2017.
“It was actually quite a nice pass and she deserved it. And records are made to be broken, and when someone breaks your record, you want it to be a player like Sue Bird,” Penicheiro said.
“Everyone loves Sue,” she added. “If she were an ass it would be easier to go after her and try to frame her, but she’s too nice and so am I.”
Even a template from Bird is a memorable moment. According to Elias, 13 players received an assist from Bird. The list includes Courtney Paris, who considered Bird one of her favorite players and spent most of her WNBA career on alert as an opponent given the unenviable task of attempting to play team defense against her.
“The second you help, she’ll find the smallest spot to get the ball to whoever needs to get it,” Paris said.
Paris came up storm in 2018 and didn’t play often in her two seasons in Seattle as her playing career ended. Paris didn’t recall the type of pass she received from Bird or how she met, but she did recall being enthralled by the sequence.
“It was a full-circle moment watching her as a younger player,” Paris said.
Ashley Walker, another member of the one-assist-from-bird club who played for Seattle in 2009, was similarly grateful.
“She’s one of the pioneers,” Walker said. “She’s someone people look up to and she did it with so much grace, so much confidence. And it’s just amazing to know that I’m a part of that experience and actually get the opportunity to say, ‘I caught a pass from Sue Bird. What have you done?'”
Bird has also made a name for herself with her assists in the postseason. She set a playoff record with 14 assists in a 2004 Western Conference finals game against Sacramento, then broke it with 16 in Game 1 of the 2020 finals against Las Vegas. Vandersloot broke that postseason record with 18 assists against Connecticut last year.
The chapter closes with one of the WNBA’s most memorable careers. Bird said she achieved everything she set out to achieve in the league and set goals for the moment.
“The simple analogy here is, who is everyone chasing in the NBA? Michael Jordan,” Bird said. “Because Michael Jordan played a full career. He won six rings. So six rings became the standard. In our league, when I came into the league, that wasn’t really there.”
She continued, “There wasn’t really a path to follow because nobody had that 20-year career yet. So I really didn’t know what to dream of and to be sitting here now with all the championships I have is just really satisfying.”
Now a young player – Bird named Arike Ogunbowale of the Dallas Wings as an example – can model the milestones in the careers of players like Maya Moore and Diana Taurasi.
Many, of course, will take a look at Bird’s illustrious career.
“I think there’s something that motivates you in that way, but at the same time I’ve also enjoyed making your own way,” Bird said. “I’m not sure. Maybe chasing something is better. Maybe there’s more pressure.”