The Seattle Storm’s Sue Bird is many things – including a future Basketball Hall of Famer, still one of the best point guards in the game today, an agent of change for the greater good in society with Megan Rapinoe and an unapologetic sneakerhead, which we at Beyond The W especially appreciate.
Dime Magazine and Uproxx caught up with Bird during NBA All-Star weekend in Chicago. She was part of a panel with JBL for the Sounds of the City event that spotlighted hoops fashion and culture.
What are her top-3 current sneakers in her collection? Here is what she said to Dime.
I mean, number one is the Sacai’s. Every color, doesn’t matter. They’re the perfect shoe, I think. Number two is the Jordan 1 Off-Whites – the red and black. Although I do like the all-white. The UNC’s are alright. The all-white ones are sick. And number three? I’m trying to think … oh, the Travis Scott’s.
–Sue Bird (Dime Magazine/Uproxx)
Bird said that the high tops are being shoehorned into her collection and that she is particularly a fan of the low-tops.
When asked about who her favorite player in the NBA is, to no one’s surprise, she said Kyrie Irving. Bird has also expressed her fandom of Irving’s signature kicks in the past as well.
Dime also made sure to ask Bird about the rapid pace of movement we have seen in the WNBA after only a week and change of free agency. Bird believes the new CBA has already been a game changer and that is evident through the number of free agent moves and trades happening at breakneck speeds.
I think that’s something we’ve been missing in the WNBA is player movement. Truthfully, we were, for a long time as a league, not really money motivated, because the money wasn’t really that different from team to team. So that wasn’t really going to push you to another city and you were probably going to stay where you were. So now we have situations where another team can offer you more money and that kinda, that money starts to talk.
–Sue Bird (Dime Magazine/Uproxx)
I mean, we’re athletes, we play a sport, but it’s a job so you gotta make the money while you can. To see it happening like that, I think it’s great for the league, it’s great for us, it’s great for the storylines.
–Sue Bird (Dime Magazine/Uproxx)
The change that has happened over time with the growth of women’s basketball is that it is becoming more and more infused into the overall basketball culture. Bird talked about how this change is opening the eyes of companies to see that having women represented paints a more accurate picture of the culture.
I think we all as athletes, whether on the court or off the court, doesn’t matter, you’re expressing yourself in these ways, and you have to have the tools to do it. And for a while, we didn’t really have, for female athletes, the proper tools, right to fully express yourself. Like, maybe some people did, but for me personally it just didn’t exist.
–Sue Bird (Dime Magazine/Uproxx)
Early on in her playing career, she admitted that she felt like she was trying to hard to fit into the early culture the WNBA was trying to cultivate – one that was more woman-centric than athlete-centric.
…I think – not to get too deep – but the WNBA, we were kinda sorta figuring out who we are a a league and what we are, and I think early on a lot of the marketing was pushing the feminine side. And I think one of the cool things about female athletes is we’re like a mixed bag, when we’re out on the court it can be aggressive, some of the athletes do wear makeup, I don’t.
–Sue Bird (Dime Magazine/Uproxx)
