Sue Bird deserves significant credit for the worldwide growth of women’s basketball over the past two decades. She led the US Olympic gold medal streak and the WNBA on the brink of exploding, spent a decade competing overseas and was a statesman and competitor who would gladly rip your heart out.
She did this job for the game she loved, saving a generation of players and cementing the foundation for the sport, the league and the legacy. The problem is when you’re good enough to build something that can outlast you, if you stick around long enough, you might end up fighting one of the beasts you’ve raised.
Well, congratulations?
Bird, a five-time gold medalist, is now the general manager of the US women’s national team, in charge of selecting the coach and roster for basketball’s most successful team. As it is The USA enters the semifinals of the World CupBird and Team USA must struggle to maintain the standard she helped set as the world took steps to catch up.
Teams like France and Italy grew up in a basketball world where Bird was the perennial standard player, and now they’re closer than ever to dethroning the United States. meanwhile, A’ja Wilson, the best player in the world, is in the state is recovering from a nagging injury in preparation for his return to the Las Vegas Aces, prioritizing the league Bird helped build over the team Bird currently assists.
Even if the U.S. slides to a gold medal on Sunday, the signs of a shifting world order are impossible to ignore. It’s not just that France came within a point of the USA in the gold medal game at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Last week, Les Bleus set a FIBA record by hitting 22 3-pointers (compare that to the USA, which currently shoots worse than 30 percent from beyond the arc). They appear to be the team most poised to upset Team USA, who own four straight World Championship golds.
Then there was that match against Italy in pool play. Italian guard Cecilia Zandalasini looked carefree as she led all scorers with 14 points. In a game where no American player seemed ready to take over (almost until too late), Zandalasini, who plays for the Golden State Valkyries, was more than happy to be a force on the floor. And why not? Why would she feel out of place? She played in 126 WNBA games, some alongside players who wore Team USA uniforms. Her current WNBA coach, Natalie Nakase, is an assistant for Team USA. In a week, the Zandalas will return to the Bay on the same line as the Nakase. In her Italian uniform, she had Team USA hot on her heels.
Belgium, a team that has retained nearly half of its roster from the 2018 World Cup, is coached by Mike Thibault, a three-time WNBA Coach of the Year who retired after the 2022 season. He won Olympic gold as an assistant with Team USA in 2008 and 2024, and is now tasked with catching up (and potentially tearing down) the legacy he helped build.
This comes at the same time—and because of, and in addition to—the rise of the WNBA and its own power.
Former WNBA coach Mike Thibault is leading former Liberty center Emma Meesseman on the Belgium team. (Virgin LeFour / Getty Images)
A few days before they were to fly to Germany, Kelsey Plum (Phoenix Mercury) and Wilson withdrew from the US roster. Plum later announced that she would miss the remainder of the WNBA season due to leg injuries.
There were rumors around Wilson that she was not 100 percent for some time. She was listed on the Aces’ injury report twice in August due to a serious back injury. With the absence of NaLyssa Smith, who was ruled out for the remainder of the Aces’ season in late August, the four-time MVP knows the responsibility for the title will fall even more heavily on her shoulders.
With the WNBA season getting longer, players are increasingly talking about keeping their bodies in good shape. There is a financial benefit to that – under the new collective bargaining agreement, the WNBA champions earn $60,000 apiece, and the WNBA Finals MVP gets an additional $30,000. Add to that the fact that with the World Cup being held earlier than usual (usually occurring after the WNBA season ends), players must manage a delicate balance of play and rest priorities, injury management and effort — all against the backdrop of the increasingly physical level of play in FIBA basketball.
Without Wilson, make no mistake, the US still has the most talented individual players. Still, his roster would be better if it featured the best player in the world — even if she played 20 minutes a game; but would it be a better option for the best player in the world?
For all the debate surrounding Wilson’s decision to come off the roster after averaging nearly 33 minutes a game for the Aces during August, can’t you imagine there was some relief in some WNBA circles when she announced she was staying stateside? After all, a player who prioritizes the WNBA and her team’s success has long been a league goal. This is why player salaries are rising: the season is expanding (to 50 games by 2027), and players are taking more time and effort. W wants to be the fulcrum around which players plan everything else.
It wasn’t that long ago that Bird was pushing Team USA to include more basketball for its players. After the 2018 World Cup, she and Diana Taurasi approached national team director Carol Callan and asked that the annual schedule leading up to the 2020 Olympics be expanded to include more time together.
Bird had just led the Storm to their third WNBA title, and Taurasi was coming off a season in which she became the first WNBA player ever to hit 1,000 3-pointers and 8,000 career points. Bird, at the time, was no longer playing overseas in the offseason, while Taurasi was entering her first WNBA offseason with no plans to compete in Russia or Turkey. The WNBA season ended earlier that month and almost immediately, the 12-member team boarded flights to Tenerife. Still, Bird felt there was an important piece to the next level of Team USA’s preparation: more basketball.
In 2019, USA Basketball added games against college teams around the country (memorably, dropping a game in Eugene, Ore., to the Ducks, led by then-senior Sabrina Ionescu’s 30 points). The pandemic interrupted the extended program.
In 2020, Bird — then the vice president of the National Women’s Basketball Association — helped strengthen the league with a new CBA and make the league a more viable long-term option for players. In 2021, she led Team USA to its seventh Olympic gold medal (fifth).
After the 2022 season, she finally hung up her playing shoes.
Now, her second act in the sport has coincided with an explosion of attention for the women’s game and the landmark WNBA CBA. Money is flowing into the league like never before, making room for more and more international games and making the league a priority like never before. The talent level is improving everywhere, and the gap between the best and the next best is closing.
None of these things exist in a vacuum, as each feeds off the other. Ultimately, her front-row seat at the World Cup’s most talented competition is both a byproduct and the fuel of all her work.
