For Sue Bird, the WNBA Has Always Been Cool
The retired superstar’s latest venture is a documentary celebrating her legacy in the league.
Since 1996, the WNBA has created superstars, and the rest of the world is finally catching up. For many longtime fans, though, the GOAT has already been decided: It’s Sue Bird.
The 12-time All-Star point guard spent two decades in the league, winning four championships with her team, the Seattle Storm, and five Olympic gold medals. In 2022, Bird retired. She considers herself one of the luckier players who has had a chance to take time off from playing year-round (most WNBA players also play overseas to compensate for low pay) and start exploring other avenues before officially calling it quits. Since then, Bird has co-founded the media-production company Togethxr and started a production company with her fiancée, soccer star Megan Rapinoe. And she’s embracing Hollywood — a bit.
In January, the documentary Sue Bird: In the Clutch premiered at Sundance and is now available to rent on Apple TV. Directed by Sarah Dowland, the film follows Bird’s last two seasons in the league — starting near the end of the 2021 season when she didn’t know if she was returning to her last game after the 2022 season — and highlights her life leading up to that moment. It touches on Bird’s decision to come out in 2017, the pay disparity and her experience playing abroad, and the age-old question of what comes next when you’re done, something Bird is still figuring out today.
What was it like having a film crew capture your last full year in the WNBA?
The only part that was semi-stressful was when I did know that I was going to come back for another year after the 2021 season. In fairness, I was up front about that from the beginning of the process. I just didn’t want to fuck the documentary up; there are budgets, and you have to plan ahead and all these things, and now I’m adding this other year. But if you watch the documentary, there’s the moment when the fans cheered “One more year” and it was like, Who’s saying “no” to that? What shook me was that I had not made mention of retirement. I had not spoken a word about feeling like I was weighing my options. I had always said, “I’m on a one-year plan” and “I’ll evaluate when the season’s over,” but I’d been saying that for years.
But going into the 2022 season, I kind of knew it would be my last. I’m from New York, so as we approached the New York Liberty game, I knew this was going to be the last time for me to play in New York and it became almost urgent to announce it. I wanted to have my friends, my family, and everybody in the New York area who has been a part of my career know this was the last time that they could come see me play in the city. And that moment kind of dictated everything, and I started telling people.
Looking at retirement feels scary, and I’m curious if you think female athletes look at it differently than male athletes might. I think sometimes a male athlete will retire, start a podcast about himself and the sport, and keep going, whereas women tend to start a whole other venture.
The gender aspect of it … it just exists. When you’re a woman in sport versus when you’re a man in sport, especially when you’ve gotten to the elite levels of the WNBA and NBA or whatever league we’re talking about, we understand the discrepancies. To your point, it is true. If you’re a male athlete of the same level that I was in my sport, you’re talking about the one percenters, and that also means the one percenters of salary. So we’re talking about people who make like $40 million a year just from playing. They’re in a different world, and yeah, they can just go have a podcast and talk about themselves and their career. I don’t know if women would want to do that. I think we’re just a little more multifaceted in that way and we want to have conversations about different things.
When did you start embracing your other passions?
I stopped playing overseas when I was around 34. At that point, I understood that I had this unique opportunity where I’m still playing in the WNBA, and that goes from like April to October, but now I have this huge chunk of time and my offseason where I can start to figure some things out. I did that for close to ten years. So I was dipping my toes in some waters and that helped me identify what it was I was interested in so when I retired it wasn’t this abrupt change.
What does a typical day off look like for you now?
Even though I’m technically a year-and-a-half-plus retired, I’m still shedding some of my old ways and habits. For a while, there was a little bit of guilt if I didn’t work out or if I wanted to eat pizza and ice cream for a week straight. Sometimes, the days off are my hardest because I’m so used to being active and busy constantly. What I’ve tried to put into my routine is ways to quiet myself and kind of chill. I started to read a lot, and that helps because it’s both quiet time and it’s taking you somewhere else. I like nonfiction, but I prefer fiction, and that’s helped me in retirement.
What’s the last book you read that you couldn’t put down?
We just went on vacation for like four days — it was a quickie — and I read this book called The Women by Kristin Hannah. I got really into it.
Besides reading, do you have a No. 1 rule for relaxing on a day off?
The beauty of having two retired athletes in the same house is that on our days off, we’re together a lot. Neither of us is on some regular schedule, so we have each other. Like every couple, 90 percent of our conversations are like, Well, what are we eating for dinner? So whether we’re cooking, ordering in, or going out with friends, that’s something that we’re always looking forward to doing. For me, going out to dinner with friends is the best. There’s just something very grounding about it, and it’s definitely a part of our routine.
What’s your No. 1 rule when it comes to tipping?
I’m pretty religious about 20 percent. You would have to be so fucking egregious for me not to leave 20 percent. You could also be so amazing that it would prompt me to leave more, and that has happened for sure.
You and Megan also work together on your production company, A Touch More, so what’s your No. 1 rule for working with your significant other?
One of our biggest rubs is not cutting the other one off, because we’re just constantly throwing stuff at each other. Or if I’m like, “Megan, my opinion on this is X. What’s your opinion?” [grabs her phone and starts to stare at it], she’ll be like, “Did you just ask me a question and then go and look at your phone right away?” And we both do it. The phone, whether we like it or not, is a part of our lives, so we’ve just gotten really good about communicating around it.
Did you have a favorite stadium to play in that wasn’t Seattle?
It was always New York. That was going home, and that was always the one I circled in the calendar. For the majority of my career, they played at the Garden because the Knicks owned them, and that was amazing because Madison Square Garden is where I grew up watching professional games.
What’s your go-to stadium food as a spectator? And does it change based on sport or arena?
At a basketball game, I love soft pretzels. I’m obsessed. At a Knicks game, I love knishes. If I go to a baseball game, it’s a hot dog. But if you go to Seattle, they have a sausage-and-pepper situation, and they also have really good garlic fries.
What about a soccer match?
Where Megan played for the last couple of years, they always had free popcorn in the area that she put me in because it was a suite. The popcorn was bomb.
There’s a whole section in the doc where you’re taking all these supplements. Which ones do you recommend for everyone?
It’s very specific to you, but by the rule of thumb I feel like you can never go wrong with fish oil and vitamin D. Those are generally a good starting point, and then maybe a multivitamin, depending on what you need. The one random one I can throw in there that I really like is cherry juice. It helps with sleep, it’s yummy, and it’s also good for recovery throughout your day.
What’s the best advice you’ve received from a coach?
Probably from Coach Auriemma. He would say, “Basketball is not a game of how to, it’s a game of when to.” You get to a certain level and everybody knows how to shoot, how to pass, how to do all the things, but do they know when to? Because that’s what being a great player is. That was something I truly embodied and absorbed.
Would you ever want to coach?
As of right now, no. I always say “never say never,” but no. The life of a coach is similar to an athlete because you’re traveling all the time, you’re on this schedule that you have no control over, and it’s tough. I just lived that life. That’s the main thing that’s keeping me away from it. And then there’s the part where coaching is really hard.
How has the WNBA changed from the time you entered it to now?
The level of play has just continued to get better. I always say it’s because it’s 12 teams, 12 roster spots, and every year there’s a new draft class of 21-year-olds trying to take all the jobs. It’s just survival of the fittest, and what that means is you have the best of the best at all times. From my first year to my last year, it was just a constant incline of talent. As far as the narrative around the WNBA, we’re finally seeing that shift. I used to say that for whatever reason — a lot of the reasons being sexism, racism, homophobia, and just the patriarchy in general — the WNBA didn’t have the “cool” factor. We were the butt of the joke on SNL for a time or two. If you turned on a male sports talking-head podcast, you would hear not just that they didn’t like the WNBA, but they have to shit on it. That was unique to the WNBA. But we finally got to this turning point where that narrative has changed and it’s now cool to go to WNBA games. It’s cool to be all in about women’s basketball. And that’s been probably by far the biggest shift, and that’s why you’re seeing individual players get the love and the limelight and all the things.
Your other brand, Togethxr, has a shirt with the slogan “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports” on it, and it’s been seen everywhere. What’s your No. 1 rule for writing a good slogan?
I’m big on anything that has multiple meanings and some sort of cleverness, with a lean into wit or comedy. I have to shout out Nike because of what they’ve been doing with Caitlin Clark’s billboards and when Sabrina Ionescu went against Steph Curry, like those little one-liners. I mean, those were fucking perfect.
Is there one basketball game you think about a lot?
I have some favorites, but what’s interesting is that sadly, right now, the basketball game that I think of is my final game. Not because of the winning or losing but just the moment itself. It was a playoff game, so it was a serious moment and we lost, so that’s that part. But I had gotten to a really good place where I understood that whatever “last” I was experiencing — whether it was last season, last home game, or whatever — I understood that those moments didn’t define anything. It didn’t define my career in any way. So I got to a really good place of understanding that, and it allowed me just to be in the moment with it. But after that last final home playoff game, where we lost, so the season was over, the fans went from chanting “One more year” the year before to chanting “Thank you, Sue.” I think about that one every time.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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