Sue Bird Is Entering a New Era—and Doing It Her Way

Reported by Women's Health Magazine.

Sue Bird has never needed to announce herself. In Seattle, she's neighborhood royalty — a permanent statue outside Climate Pledge Arena, Storm staff memorabilia everywhere, a presence that lingers even when she's not in the building. In New York, she moves between anonymity and being stopped four times before dinner. What's consistent is that when people do recognize her now, according to Women's Health Magazine, they're congratulating her without always knowing exactly why — and Bird thinks that's a pretty good sign.

Four years out of a 21-year WNBA career, the Naismith Hall of Famer is running at full speed in a second act that defies any single job title. She's an NBC Sports analyst, a podcast host on Bird's Eye View, a co-founder of women's sports media company Togethxr, a partner and chief strategy officer at Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment, a member of the Seattle Storm ownership group, and — perhaps most consequentially — managing director of the U.S. women's national basketball team, where she will ultimately decide who represents the country at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The résumé reads less like a retirement plan and more like a second career that was years in the making.

The Point Guard Instinct Doesn't Retire

What makes Bird formidable off the court is the same thing that made her dangerous on it: she sees the floor before anyone else does. Togethxr co-founder Jessica Robertson describes her as someone who can "reframe everything in about two sentences," reading gaps in a room the way she once read gaps in a defense. Deep Blue CEO Laura Correnti — who privately calls Bird her "chief point guard officer" — watched her address a Fortune 100 CMO, work through challenges, and elevate an entire concept in a single conversation. Bird's older sister Jen puts it plainly: "Sue is the master of the assist." Her coaches at UConn had to remind her she was allowed to shoot. She was always more interested in making everyone around her better.

That instinct shaped her earlier off-court work too. The Instagram Live conversations she started with then-partner Megan Rapinoe during the COVID-19 pandemic became a full production company. A call from Alex Morgan led to Togethxr. Years of walking into investor rooms and selling the future of women's basketball — before the sold-out crowds and landmark media deals made it obvious — built credibility she now cashes in with receipts. "You have the actual proof," she says. Diana Taurasi, her UConn teammate and five-time Olympic co-conspirator, is watching the whole evolution up close: "Sue's literally my sister," she says. They're still grabbing Americanos and talking life whenever they're in the same city.

At 45, Bird is operating in the rare, clarifying space between legacy and reinvention — close enough to her playing days that the instincts are sharp, far enough away to apply them somewhere entirely new. She's never chased the spotlight; she's built something more durable than that. The woman who spent two decades making everyone around her better is now doing it for an entire sport — and she's only just getting started.

Read the original at Women's Health Magazine.