Sue Bird becomes first WNBA player to receive a statue

SEATTLE — Sue Bird has seen it all.

The four-time WNBA champion and 13-time All-Star spent her entire 21-year career with the Seattle Storm after a successful collegiate career at Connecticut, retiring as an icon and the league’s all-time assists leader in 2022. Since then, Bird has seen her name go up in the rafters of Climate Pledge Arena — Key Arena for most of her days — and has even had a street named after her. She’s been a regular courtside guest for a Seattle team that was just two years old when she was drafted in 2002, and now practices in a multi-million-dollar Interbay training facility. Bird even joined the team’s ownership group in 2024.

But on Sunday, Bird flew where no WNBA player has before.

Sue Bird received a statue outside Climate Pledge Arena on Sunday morning with fiancée Megan Rapinoe, former teammates, from Swin Cash to Lauren Jackson, and competitors like longtime friend and WNBA all-time scoring leader Diana Taurasi present. Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell spoke in Bird’s honor, while members of the state government decreed Aug. 17 as Washington’s “Sue Bird Day.” A flag reading “Forever Sue” was placed atop the Space Needle in recognition as well.

“I feel really lucky that I’ve been able to stand in front of you and, you know, share my memories with the jersey retirements and big games and final games,” Bird said in a speech after the unveiling. “This does feel different, though.”

Bird’s summer of recognition isn’t over yet, as she will be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Sept. 6 alongside NBA greats like Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard, and WNBA legends Maya Moore and Sylvia Fowles.

The statue, designed by artist Julie Rotblatt Amrany, who has authored such works as the iconic Michael Jordan statue in the United Center atrium in Chicago, spent about a year creating the piece. It depicts Sue Bird taking a right-handed scoop layup, with her iconic ponytail caught in the wind.

“Fun little fact about my career … my very first points in the WNBA at Key Arena were on a layup. My very last points at Climate Pledge were on a layup,” Bird said. “Not really known for those layups, but it’s actually something that means a lot to me.”

Bird also became just the second professional basketball player between the NBA’s SuperSonics and the Storm to receive a statue outside of Climate Pledge Arena. Lenny Wilkens, part of the Sonics’ 1979 championship-winning squad, had his likeness immortalized earlier this summer.

Bird shouted Wilkens out in her speech, but emphasized how important the moment was in the history of women’s sports.

“I’m the first (WNBA) player to ever have a statue built, and that fact both humbles me and fills me with pride. Not just for me, but for what this represents for women’s basketball, for every young girl who will walk past this statue and think that maybe it could be her someday. And every young boy who’s going to do the same thing,” Bird said.

Before the ceremony, Bird reflected on how she reached this point. From growing up on the East Coast to joining a newly formed Seattle squad in a newly formed league, Bird didn’t know how the experiment would go after being picked No. 1 overall in the 2002 WNBA Draft.

She waded her way through an exceptional rookie season in which she finished fifth in MVP voting, and things only got better. The 2003 season saw Australian star Lauren Jackson emerge as a league MVP, and the duo led Seattle to its first title in 2004.

After five straight conference semifinal eliminations, Bird and Jackson climbed the mountain again in 2010 with All-Star and Hall-of-Famer Swin Cash bolstering the roster.

Jackson and Cash would both be off the roster by the end of the 2012 campaign as Bird and the Storm went through five straight losing seasons. Bird’s support for the organization that drafted her never wavered, something that paid off in the long run.

“It is really special to have played in one place. It does mean something different for me to come back to this city, to come to games. There’s just a different connection I have because I only played here,” Bird said.

All the losing netted the Storm the top selections in the 2015 and 2016 drafts, which Seattle parlayed into superstars Jewell Loyd and Breanna Stewart, respectively.

The two young bucks proved to form a dynamic trio with Bird and went on to win titles in 2018 and 2020 to punctuate what was already seen as one of the greatest basketball careers in history for Bird. The Storm played a portion of their games at Angel of the Winds Arena in Everett while renovations to Climate Pledge Arena were underway in 2019 and 2020.

Bird played her final home regular-season game for the Storm on Aug. 7, 2022. The atmosphere in the new Climate Pledge Arena that day was electric, as a sellout crowd of over 18,000 serenaded their legend. Bird gave a speech after the game, a loss to Las Vegas, and was visibly moved by the standing ovation she received. She thanked the fans for their unwavering support in that speech, but explained three years later how powerful that day was for her to see her loved ones.

“It was probably the first time that all my friends and family from all over the place were at one place, one time to celebrate and watch me play. It was special,” Bird said of the day, as friends and family lined the tunnel to greet her as she came out of the locker room.

Watching the WNBA grow as rapidly as it has since Bird’s retirement has been a joy for one of the league’s originals.

With the league slated to grow from 13 to 18 franchises by 2030 and young stars like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and even Seattle’s young Dominique Malonga selling out arenas, Bird is savoring the moment.

“It’s the biggest ‘I told you so’ that any of us could ever have in our lives, because we knew what we had. We believed in it, we just needed other people to see it and now they did, and of course, it goes ‘kaboom,’” Bird said.

Sue Bird stole the hearts of basketball fans everywhere for over two decades, but she belongs to Seattle. For most of her tenure, an NBA franchise was missing from the sports climate. Bird gracefully handled the burden of being the sole source of high-level professional basketball in a region with an unmistakable love for the game.

Her four championships dwarf even the most accomplished figures in Seattle sports, but Bird’s contribution to growing the women’s game will always be paramount to her.

“The truth is, I never set out to be the first at anything. But if being the first means that I won’t be the last, if this statue means that 20 years from now there’ll be statues of other WNBA greats, some are in the audience, and players whose names we don’t even know yet, then I’m proud to be the first.”