One of the biggest questions WNBA fans have heading into what’s purported to be a wild free agency period is whether Sue Bird, the all-time assists leader and greatest point-guard ever, will be back to play another season with her Seattle Storm.

After losing an overtime thriller in a brutal single elimination playoff game to Diana Taurasi’s Phoenix Mercury this past fall, Seattle fans broke out into a forceful “One More Year” chant as the two GOATs exchanged jerseys and spoke with ESPN’s Holly Rowe at center court.

Storm fans don't want this to be the last game for Sue Bird 🥺 pic.twitter.com/HoSWUyRB9Z

— ESPN (@espn) September 26, 2021

“I will take my time and make the right decision,” Bird told Rowe that day about her retirement status.

Though we have to wait a bit longer to find out her 2022 plans, Bird recently opened up to Just Women’s Sports about her basketball influences, what it’s really like to play with some of the best to ever do it, and what she sees ahead for the WNBA. 

Bird’s early influences

Born in 1980, the now 41-year-old came of age at a time when women’s sports were not readily available to consumers.

“It took until I was 15 years old to find the female athlete that I could look up to, identify with,” she recalls. “Before then, there just weren’t women on TV. I couldn’t just sit down, turn on ESPN and watch WNBA games. It didn’t even exist.”

Like for millions of other U.S. athletes in her generation, it was the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games that provided Bird her first visible glimpse of what was possible for women in sports. And the athlete she was immediately influenced by was Jennifer Azzi of the USA Women’s Basketball Team.

“When I saw her [Azzi] on the ’96 Olympic team, that was my ‘See It, Be It’ moment,” says Bird.

If the name looks familiar to current college hoops fans, it’s because UConn’s latest big-time freshman and the 2021 number one overall recruit, Azzi Fudd, was named after Jen Azzi by her basketball-playing mother.

The other player that was a big influence on young Sue Bird was Mike Bibby, the 1998 second overall NBA draft pick who took his Arizona Wildcats all the way to the NCAA title in 1997 when saucer-eyed Bird was a junior in high school. 

“My all-time favorite player, the minute I saw him when he was in Arizona, I was obsessed,” Bird admits.  

The thing about Bibby’s game that stood out to Bird was that he wasn’t content to just be a facilitating point guard.

“Point guards were always the one, they dribbled it up, they passed it. Good job, go stand in the corner. But Mike Bibby was like, ‘Nah, I’m shooting this too.’ I feel I’m one of a couple of us that, I would say, started the whole scoring point guard thing in the women’s game,” Bird says.

“I actually became friends with him shortly after that. So I have his jersey. He knows I have it and he knows I want it signed. So I have to get it signed.”

Playing with Giants

A couple years after latching onto to Bibby’s style of play, Bird arrived in Storrs for her freshman year as a UConn Huskie, where she would go on to team with Diana Taurasi, who was a year behind her in school. Looking back 23 years and five Olympic gold medals later, Bird is grateful of all the times the two legends got to reunite on Team USA.

“Both our friendship off the court and our chemistry on the court, it started in college when we were teammates. I feel anytime we can get back to being teammates versus playing against each other in the WNBA, it’s always welcome. It’s just so comfortable. It feels like you’re coming home in a way,” she says.

In terms of what sets her best friend apart from the rest, Bird says, “D is the definition of a gym rat.” During the seven years they played together in Russia, Bird recalls, “You would have to beg her not to go in on the day off. You’d have to sit her down and be like, ‘Listen, you actually need to rest your body.’ And she’s like, ‘No, no, no. I need to get some shots up. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. I just need to get some shots up.’ I think for her, that’s where she gets her mojo.”

Another giant Bird has played against in the W and alongside on Team USA is Taurasi’s Mercury teammate Britney Griner. The 6’9” center out of Baylor was the first overall pick in 2013 and has been a menace inside the paint for Phoenix ever since.

“She’s the most dominant player in our league. You can argue MVPs and you can argue GOATs and Best Ever and all that kind of stuff. She is by far the most dominant player,” Bird says of Griner. “When you play against Phoenix, the entire game plan has to be about what you’re doing against BG.” 

As with Taurasi, Bird has the unique perspective of playing both with and against Griner.

“I think the best part is, she doesn’t take crap from anybody on the court, but she’s such a good person and such a good teammate. When you’re competing against her, you know you can’t mess with BG. BG will let you know, she’ll let you have it. But as a teammate, she’s the sweetest, she just wants to do whatever the team needs.”

A different tall, gangly player with an insane wingspan has been a major reason Bird has continued to tally victories through her late thirties. After Bird’s tenure with the storm was more than a decade old, the team drafted Breanna Stewart with the top overall pick in 2016, and suddenly the Storm were once again contenders. 

Bird’s first two WNBA Championships came six years apart in 2004 and 2010. Since Stewart came on the scene, they’ve already added two more, winning it all in 2018 and 2020. 

Stewart, who won four NCAA National Championships in a row at UConn, and now has a EuroLeague title in addition to her WNBA Championships, is arguably the winningest athlete in the game. Bird has said elsewhere that Stewart “literally saved my career.” 

“In Stewie’s case, she only knows winning. So there’s this air about her, almost like she just doesn’t know what losing is,” Bird says about her teammate. “Whereas for myself, sadly, I’ve lost some big games, so I’m very aware of that. I know. I’m always fearful of it. For her, she’s not really scared of it. She’s just like, ‘This is what I do. I win.’… There’s a confidence there, but it’s not cocky.”

Looking ahead

Bird and Stewart may represent different generations of players, but one thing they have in common is a passionate desire to grow the game. Recognizing the benefit of continually enhancing fan engagement and connection, the two superstars have recently joined with The Collective Marketplace to offer fans access to personal and autographed items from their closets. It’s another example of something that’s been available on the men’s side for decades but is just becoming available to women’s sports fans, and Bird, Stewart, and DT are headlining the charge.

“I am a little bit of a collector, and I think, for me, it’s more that feeling of nostalgia and just things having sentimental value,” Bird says of her collection on the site. “I kept those practice jerseys, and I kept those uniforms and kept those warmups for a reason. So it’s great that I can now share that.”

Bird isn’t afraid to highlight distinctions between the fanbases of the men’s and women’s game. Even though there is a high degree of overlap, Bird points out that quality vs. quantity of fan engagement is an important distinction.

“The one thing I love about women’s sports is the engagement,” she explains. “That to me is the story of where the growth of women’s basketball is and where it’s going to go. Because the fan base, that fan base is legit. And they love us. They’ll do anything to support us. They follow our careers. So when you have a passionate fan base like that, the growth is inevitable.”

 One of the most obvious types of growth for her game is WNBA expansion, which became a trending topic as soon as the 2021 season ended. With Alana Beard headlining the charge for a team in Oakland and Drake tweeting for a team in Toronto, everyone seems to have an opinion about what the league should do. 

“I do think the league needs to expand,” says Bird. “It doesn’t need to be too fast. I think one team at a time. We can’t go too many teams too fast.”

But Bird has no doubt the incoming talent is there to support growth. With the rise of college star Paige Bueckers, who happens to be a fellow Huskie, Bird can’t help but see things coming full circle.

“I think [Paige] is more Diana than anything. What I see in her is a player that has a flare, has a swag about her, has a confidence. And that’s where I see her similar to D in a lot of ways. 

“You could maybe argue she enjoys passing more than anything. So there’s a nice balance there, where I think as she gets older, she’ll start to really tap into when to set your teammates up, when to be the aggressor and take over games. She’s already showing signs of all those things.” 

Hoping Bird will be on the court to officially hand over the reins to UConn’s newest hotshot point guard when she enters the league in a couple years is probably too much to ask of the 41-year-old legend. But until she steps away, Bird’s fans can continue to dream.

(Editor’s note: The Collective Marketplace on Athlete Direct is a sponsor of Just Women’s Sports)

Tessa Nichols is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.

On Tuesday, FIFPRO announced the launch of Project ACL, a three-year research initiative designed to address a steep uptick in ACL injuries across women's professional football.

Project ACL is a joint venture between FIFPRO, England’s Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), Nike, and Leeds Beckett University. While the central case study will focus on England’s top-flight Women's Super League, the findings will be distributed around the world.

ACL tears are between two- and six-times more likely to occur in women footballers than men, according to The Guardian. And with both domestic and international programming on the rise for the women’s game, we’ve seen some of the sport's biggest names moved to the season-ending injury list with ACL-related knocks.

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Soccer superstars like Vivianne Miedema, Beth Mead, Catarina Macario, Marta, and England captain Leah Williamson have all struggled with their ACLs in recent years, though all have since returned to the field. In January, Chelsea and Australia forward Sam Kerr was herself sidelined with the injury, kicking off a year of similar cases across women’s professional leagues. And just yesterday, the Spirit announced defender Anna Heilferty would miss the rest of the NWSL season with a torn ACL. The news comes less than two weeks after Bay FC captain Alex Loera went down with the same injury. 

Project ACL will closely study players in the WSL, monitoring travel, training, and recovery practices to look for trends that could be used to prevent the injury in the future. Availability of sports science and medical resources within individual clubs will be taken into account throughout the process.

ACL injuries in women's football have long outpaced the same injury in the men's game, but resources for specialized prevention and treatment still lag behind. Investment in achieving a deeper, more specialized understanding of the problem should hopefully alleviate the issue both on and off the field.