In an American Express commercial in 2003, Sue Bird dressed in her Seattle Storm uniform and jumped through a crowd of delis as if being introduced at a basketball game, “Number Ten … Number Ten!”
Accessible on YouTube, this jagged boo was a minor push towards mainstream fame for Bird, who helped the UConn women’s basketball team reach national championships before being #1 in 2000 and 2002. 1 pick in the WNBA draft.
After all these years, Bird is coming to the end of her final season to retire as one of the most successful players and influential women in basketball history, doing so from a platform where she simply jumps, dribbles and highs. , but actually she built it.
“The WNBA really didn’t have the mechanism to take advantage of guys like him,” said UConn coach Geno Auriemma. Said. “You see a kid coming out right now, kids who aren’t even a third of what Sue plays, and this is how they treated these kids during the draft, it’s like a visiting statesman from another country. And then the promo machine kicks in when trying to create them, and sometimes it’s guaranteed, sometimes not. But I remember thinking that the WNBA wasn’t equipped to take some of their famous stars and make everyone’s name known. It had to happen gradually for him.”
Bird, 41, will play the Storm’s final game at the Mohegan Sun Arena on Thursday in Connecticut as he visits the Sun, and he has indeed become one of the sport’s most important faces over time.
All of her career success, which has coincided with the rise in popularity of women’s basketball and the visibility of the WNBA, has been well documented and appropriately celebrated in recent years—because brick by brick or trophy trophy, Syosset’s Long Island hamlet has made statements that really need to be made over the years. found.
He won the New York high school state championship at Christ The King. Won two national championships at UConn. She won four WNBA titles and five EuroLeague titles with Storm. He won five Olympic gold medals and four world championships with Team USA.
he is celebrated because instead of all this before BT.
“Obviously the league gave him an opportunity,” Auriemma said. “But he did it by winning. Some people do this with their social media presence. Sue has done this on the back of wins and championships. CEO He left a legacy that very, very few will inherit in every scene he was able to perform on…
“I say, who else? D, maybe. Obviously, D.”
Sue and D, a phrase synonymous with basketball success and a couple – WNBA’s all-time assists leader Bird, WNBA’s all-time top scorer Diana Taurasi. Icons now, both. When young people choose our little corner of the world to start making a name for themselves.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Auriemma’s career at this point was getting to know 16-year-olds whose evolution has become the adoration of a global audience, whose thoughts and impact on society ultimately surpassed basketball.
Bird came under the radar of college coaches in his sophomore year at Syosset High in 1995-96. He was about to transfer to basketball giant Christ The King in Queens and had long played for the Liberty Belles of New York, an AAU team with top King players every year.
“You knew there was something unique about him,” Auriemma said. “Everything about him was fast. His feet were fast. His hands were fast. His mind, his eyes, his quick jumps. There was only one way he played basketball – he was never in a hurry, he never seemed to be in a rush, but there was a quickness about him that I didn’t see much of. He was fast, he was fast, and he was smart.”
The bird has become very marketable. She is vocal and famous in front of social issues along with her fiancé Megan Rapinoe, with whom the sport is one of the true power couples. Like most people, he is very different as an adult than he was as a child. Bird’s first visit to UConn came as part of the Christ The King team’s trip to a game. He later sat with Auriemma in her office at the Gampel Pavilion.
“She was obviously nervous,” Auriemma said. “Back then, he was more shy than anything. But the hiring thing was going pretty strong for him. Every school in the country wanted to be involved. I fooled him to this day, ‘You acted like you were making me big time, like you could pick it up or leave it at my office. By the way, I knew you were dying to come to UConn. At the same time, he wasn’t going to say anything about anything. Just typical 16-year-old girl stuff.”
This was a crucial recruitment period for UConn. Auriemma was targeting Bird, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones, and Tamika Williams, and eventually knocked each of them down – with the help of Bird, who was unknown to her at the time. He became the recruiting ringleader, building relationships that motivated players to want to play together in college, versus the personality Auriemma let him see.
“You can’t pick up the phone 24/7 and text a kid or get on the phone that easily,” Auriemma said about pre-mobile hiring. “So whenever you talked to them, you made sure you accomplished something better than saying ‘Hey, what’s up. But being with him was always easy. There was no drama. You didn’t have to go through five people to contact him. It was easy, it was simple, it wasn’t complicated.”
Bird tore eight ACLs and number one UConn in its first season. The #1 seed was upset by the State of Iowa in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. The Huskies won national titles in Bird’s sophomore season in 2000 and his senior season in 2002.
One of the best in college basketball history, the second team started seniors Bird, Cash, Jones, Williams and sophomore Taurasi. Bird celebrated this championship with a team tour on the New York Stock Exchange, where brokers kept telling him they wished he would play for the Knicks.
That’s why his early successes did not go unnoticed.
But it was a different world back then. Players were more anonymous. The league was not what it is today, nor was it a sport. Bird would change that, but then who knew what it would do in the next 20 years?
“Being born at the time of his birth gave him tremendous opportunities, but can you imagine whether he will come out as a rookie this year or last year and his social media presence?” said Auriemma. “I mean, look Paige. [Bueckers] doing. So you can imagine what someone like Sue can do, the impact she’ll have. At that time, it just didn’t exist.”
Bird was selected by Storm with the best overall pick in the 2002 draft, two years before Taurasi made it to No. 1 to Phoenix. Now they’re on the cover of a video game together, among the most successful teammates in sports history, winning medals together, playing sports together.
“You look here [fame] Auriemma said the women’s soccer team has had it since the World Cup was in the United States. “Women [basketball] The Olympic team never benefited [winning in the U.S.] If they did, can you imagine him with five Gold medals, what would that mean? It would be on the cover of Time magazine. When you think about it, it could be anything Simone Biles is. But it was not available then. It would be the basketball version of Mia Hamm. But for whatever reason, it never happened like in women’s football, like in other women’s sports it didn’t happen back then. So for now, it’s been slow. Instead of being thrown in the face of that role, she turned into that role. You are 21 years old. Become the face of sport now”
People have seen Bird succeed many times before they’ve heard much from him.
“He went from just wanting to have a chance to play to looking after all his older teammates and now having the biggest voice,” Auriemma said. Said. “There was never anyone who used his voice. He’s not that kid yelling and yelling at everyone. But when she spoke, everyone listened, and now she has more to say than ever, and her microphone is much bigger and people want to know what Sue Bird thinks about anything.”
[email protected]; @ManthonyHearst
