\n<\/p>\n
Sue Bird peeked upcourt as she caught the outlet pass. Her Seattle Storm teammate Natasha Howard had streaked ahead of her like a wide receiver, as she usually did whenever Bird was running the offense in transition. Howard realized that she was open beneath the basket and braced herself. Bird, she knew, would find her like always. She just didn\u2019t know how.<\/p>\n
Bird slithered into the lane, drawing a defender. Then, without looking, she whipped the ball<\/a> over her head and into Howard\u2019s awaiting palms.<\/p>\n \u201cMy hands were always ready for Sue when she passed me the ball,\u201d said Howard, now with the Liberty. She added: \u201cThat right there, it\u2019s like: \u2018Wow, OK, Sue. You got eyes behind your head.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Bird counts the pass among her favorite assists in her 19 seasons with the Storm. She has plenty of passes to choose from: Bird is the W.N.B.A.\u2019s career leader in assists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI have a little bit of a Rain Man brain so hold on a second,\u201d she had said as she tried to pick her favorite assist. After a second, she cited the no-look pass to Howard, in 2018, and a between-the-legs pass to a trailing Lauren Jackson in the 2003 All-Star Game. She wasn\u2019t finished.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cOh, there\u2019s also another one to Lauren,\u201d Bird said. \u201cIt was in the playoffs against Minnesota. I think it was like 2012 and we were down 3. We needed a 3, and it wasn\u2019t a fancy assist by any means, but we ran a play to perfection. I hit Lauren. She hits the shot.\u201d<\/p>\n Those are the kinds of assists that Bird built her reputation on. \u201cThe timing around a great pass is so the person you\u2019re passing to doesn\u2019t have to change anything that they\u2019re doing,\u201d Bird said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At 41 years old, Bird is within weeks of the end of her W.N.B.A. career. In June, she announced that she would retire at the end of the season, though most people had expected as much. At the end of the 2021 season, fans chanted \u201cone more year<\/a>!\u201d at an emotional Bird and kept up the campaign with hashtags on social media for months through the off-season. In January, Bird nodded to the campaign in an Instagram post and wrote \u201cOK.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her r\u00e9sum\u00e9 had room for one more season, but just barely. She is a 13-time All-Star and has won four championships. She toppled Ticha Penicheiro\u2019s career assist record of 2,599 five years ago and now has 3,222 regular-season assists in a league-record 578 games.<\/p>\n As the assists have piled up, Bird has evolved as a passer.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery now and then, it can be fancy,\u201d Bird said. \u201cEvery now and then, you do have to look the defense off, but for me, it\u2019s just always about trying to read the defense and be one step ahead, so you can find that person.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAs I\u2019ve gotten older, I\u2019ve definitely used the no-look more, and when I do a no-look nowadays, I\u2019m not trying to look like Magic Johnson did or something like that. I\u2019m really just trying to look off the defense. I\u2019m just trying to get them to think my eyes are looking somewhere else, so that I can make the play.\u201d<\/p>\n No other player is as synced with the league\u2019s infancy and growth, its history and present, as Bird, the consummate floor general who excelled through consistency by delivering the ball to the right person at the right time in the right spot, year after year, decade after decade.<\/p>\n \u201cShe is the W.N.B.A,\u201d said Crystal Langhorne, who converted 161 of Bird\u2019s passes into buckets, the fourth-most of any teammate behind Jackson (624), Breanna Stewart (345) and Jewell Loyd (217), according to the Elias Sports Bureau. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be crazy with a league where she\u2019s not there anymore. Sue is the prototype.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Hearing those types of compliments has been one of the pleasant and unexpected byproducts of announcing her retirement, Bird said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou just always knew what to expect from me,\u201d Bird said. \u201cEveryone knew if they turned on a Storm game, what they were going to see. So, it\u2019s kind of hard to imagine it not being there, because it\u2019s been there for 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n