Supersonics player and coach Lenny Wilkens,<\/a> who became the first person to have a statue unveiled outside Climate Pledge Arena in June. The statue depicts Bird, 44, scoring a layup, which she said was a nod to how she scored both her first and final baskets in the WNBA.<\/p>\nIn total, the Storm\u2019s scoring leader racked up 6,803 points to complement her WNBA-record 3,234 assists. Bird, a 13-time All-Star who won four WNBA championships, is the only player in league history to win titles across three different decades.<\/p>\n
After she was selected No. 1 in the 2002 WNBA draft, Bird was both critical to and observed the league\u2019s rapid ascent. While grateful for her personal accomplishments and those of the Storm, Bird takes great pride in what stars like herself and those in attendance, such as Diana Taurasi and Lauren Jackson, have done for the WNBA.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhat\u2019s always been so wonderful about seeing it grow, where it literally right now it\u2019s the biggest, \u2018I told you so\u2019 that anybody of us could ever have in our lives,\u201d Bird said. \u201cBecause we knew. We knew what we had, we believed in it. We just needed other people to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Few cities were as quick to embrace the WNBA upon its inception as Seattle. The Syosset, New York, native did not take that adoration from Storm fans for granted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city has given me a home, a place where I could have a career, a place where I felt welcome,\u201d Bird said. \u201cA place where I really grew up. I mean in a lot of ways, I really grew up here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evidenced by the latest addition outside Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle is also where Bird dominated. In spending her entire career with the Storm, Bird joined the NBA\u2019s Dirk Nowitzki and the late Kobe Bryant as the only players to spend 20 or more seasons with one franchise and have a statue erected in their likeness.<\/p>\n
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Many professional male athletes across various professional sports have been afforded such honors across the country. But as Bird noted, it has been rare for those in the women\u2019s basketball world to receive the same treatment. Las Vegas Aces center A\u2019ja Wilson has a statue at her alma mater, South Carolina, and Hall of Fame coach Pat Summitt does, too, next to Tennessee\u2019s Thompson-Boling Arena.<\/p>\n
To join the likes of Wilson and Summitt, as well as Wilkens, in receiving a statue is a development Bird hardly takes lightly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is really exciting to be \u2013 I don\u2019t even know if honored really covers it because it\u2019s a bronze statue that will be there forever,\u201d Bird said. \u201cAnd, it feels different when you think of it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/a><\/p>\nAndrew Destin, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE (AP) \u2014 Shortly before a bronze statue of Sue Bird was unveiled outside Climate Pledge Arena, an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[4662,47717,49,48,47718,3460,47719,7675,82,38379,630,47720,28526],"class_list":["post-78598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-aja-wilson","tag-bronze-statue","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-climate-pledge-arena","tag-las-vegas-aces","tag-lenny-wilkens","tag-seattle","tag-sports","tag-sue-bird","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-championships","tag-wnba-player"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}