Yahoo Sports Sue Bird: ‘I’ll always miss basketball, but I really did milk it’
Having won five Olympic gold medals and four WNBA championships, Sue Bird enjoyed an illustrious career before she retired at the conclusion of the 2022 season.
Bird, who is teaming up with Corona, recently talked with HoopsHype about life after basketball, what LeBron James could be going through with retirement, what it’s like to play for over two decades, and more.
How has life been for you in retirement?
SB: It’s been great. Obviously in life, there’s always good days and bad days. But for the most part, it’s been really fun to kind of explore this new chapter of my life. I look back on my basketball career, and I really feel like I got the most out of it. It got the most out of me. I’m really thankful for those times, and really where I’ve landed. I think this is why I do have so much peace in it all is because I’ll always miss it. I’ll always miss it, but I really did milk it. There was not much left for me to do. There was not much left for me to gain and it was time to move on. It’s not about whether you miss it or not, of course you do, but it’s also being able to look back and feel really satisfied about it.
I don’t miss working out. Now listen, I’m always gonna miss playoffs, big shots, big moments. I miss being on a team. That’s something I miss, just like the camaraderie of it all. But no, I don’t miss all the other crap you got to deal with. The waking up and working out, and what am I going to eat and I’ll make sure I sleep and I gotta get a nap in. It really controls your life in that way. And I loved it for 20-plus years. But now like I said, it’s time for a new chapter, and I’m really looking forward.
When did the idea of retirement first enter your mind over your 21-year career?
SB: It really didn’t enter [my mind] until after the 2021 season. Some of that was just it was a really long, tough summer. Even though we weren’t in a bubble, it wasn’t a bubble season, like it wasn’t 2020, there was still COVID and it was still very much in our lives. For pretty much half the season, we were getting tested every day. We weren’t allowed to go to restaurants. We weren’t allowed to do anything social. Then the Olympics came, [and] that was a bubble. So it was a really stressful summer, and so that was the first time where I started to think about it.
Actually similar to LeBron [James], and that’s maybe why I can relate when you go through tough seasons… you’re at a certain age and you know you only have a couple years left regardless. You do start to think of it a bit different.
After 2021, did the thought of retirement get more prevalent in your mind as time progressed?
SB: For me the way it happened was the season ended, I started thinking about those things. Pretty quickly I was like, you know what? Let me start working out like I am playing. That’s kind of how I approached it. I work with a woman named Susan. She’s my trainer and performance coach. I said to her, alright, I’m going to start doing my programming as if I am playing, and if at any point, I feel like I don’t want to do it, I’ll tell you. But once I started doing it, I realized like, okay, I do want to be doing this, this is what I want to be doing.
At the same time, there was a little bit of a tiny voice kind of like, okay, you’re doing this now you feel good about it, [but] do you want to do it beyond this season? Then what happened was the season started, I felt good physically, our team was good. I knew we were gonna have a good year, and then about a month or so in, it started to click like, okay, the travel, the grind, the day-to-day of it all, I was kind of getting over it. I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I had previously. And so midway through the season is actually when I announced that I was going to retire.
A lot of times after you have a long season and you lose the last game, and then reflecting back about how it was a tough season, you have doubt of not knowing if you want to go through that whole grind again. And then maybe a couple of weeks down the road you kind of wake up and go. 'I'm kind of missing it'. Do you think that’s what is going on with LeBron right now?
SB: Yeah, I mean, it’s possible. The only person who knows what they’re going through in those moments is that person. Obviously I can only speak to my experience, but I do think there’s an emotional aspect to all of it, right? Like you’re exhausted, you just gave everything you have physically, emotionally, mentally, all of it, and it didn’t work out. You end on a loss, and so you’re feeling the emotion and the shittiness of that. And I think in that moment, it can really have you questioning a lot.
It can be like, why do I want to do that? Do I want to do this. You said the word ‘grind’. It’s the perfect word, because it is a grind. Even in the years that you win, it’s a grind. It’s always a grind, and so, as they say, ignorance is bliss. And for someone like LeBron, he doesn’t have that bliss. He knows way too much about what it takes. He knows way too much about how an NBA season goes. So of course, he’s going to start to think about some things. I don’t think you have to put a ton of weight in it. Because of course, he’s going to be thinking about that now. That’s just where he is in his career. It doesn’t mean he’s going to retire. It doesn’t mean he’s not going to retire. It’s just kind of where he is, and I think through the offseason, it’ll become clearer for him. That’s what happened for me in 2021, that offseason, very quickly, it became clear like, alright, I do have some gas left in the tank.
As you played longer and grew older in the league, the gap between you and your counterparts got bigger. Did that take into account towards your retirement?
SB: Yes, and no. Like was my last year in the WNBA in terms of my teammates, and like you said relating to them similar to 10 years ago? No, of course not. It’s different. This was well documented, but in 2021 we had a player in camp who came up to me and was like, ‘Hey, my mom’s coming to town, and she’d love to meet you’. I was like, yeah, for sure. And she’s like, ‘You guys have the same birthday’, and I was like, oh wow. And then she was like, yeah, she’s born in 1982. I was like, ‘Wait, I’m the exact age of your mom’.
So when you start having teammates who you’re literally their mom’s age, it starts to get different. I never felt like I was too old. I didn’t feel like I was too old, I just at times didn’t want to be doing the things they were doing, so I opted out.
With you having played in the league for over two decades, you’ve seen how the game has evolved and changed. What are your thoughts about how the game has changed to what it is today?
SB: Yeah, it’s obviously changed the game completely. You could get into the whole analytics of it all and the points per possession, and what’s most valuable. I think it goes without saying when you have a team that can shoot threes, it’s an advantage. I actually experienced that in my last couple of years here in Seattle. It’s something we focused on, we led the league a couple of times in these last five or six years in threes. And the teams that I was on where we had three-point shooters, it was really tough to guard us. That’s the part I focus on the most. I don’t really get that caught up in the analytics. I know it exists. I respect it. I pay attention to it. But for me what three-point shooting does is it opens up everything else. When you have five threats on the court from three, the game gets so easy for everybody. When you have two people on the floor that teams don’t have to guard, now they can start helping, they can clog. Even with defensive three seconds, you find ways to clog the paint. And so it makes it difficult for things to function. And so to me, it’s more important to have the threat from three for that reason than anything else.
Can you talk about the partnership you’re doing with Corona?
Sue Bird: Yeah, absolutely. In my partnership with Corona, it’s been really fun to do inventive ways to kind of speak to my personality and who I am, but also connect with the fans and consumers of Corona. So for this year, we’re doing the finer recliner.
I’m recently retired, so obviously a lot more chilling happening in my life. So what better way than to kind of capture all of that with this recliner. It’s super plush, got really comfy cushions. There’s a lot of details to it that I think everyone who does win, there’ll be five winners, randomly selected. There’s a cooler that fits a six-pack of Corona, there’s obviously a cup holder, you can put your bottle in, there is a bottle opener connected that kind of catches the caps, and then there’s a built-in speaker. So it’s a great way to kick it, watch it in your backyard or wherever. And it speaks a little bit to my retired life. The sweepstakes are June 7-14. You can go on Instagram, check out the Corona USA page, and you use #CoronaFinerRecliner and #Giveaway and that’s how you can enter.
