Sue Bird is a living legend, a two-time NCAA champ, four-time WNBA champ and 13-time All-Star. She\u2019s had, by any measure, one of the greatest careers in women\u2019s basketball history, but not many people today may know that she actually worked for about a year with the Denver Nuggets, too.<\/p>\n
Back in 2018, Bird was hired by the Nuggets<\/a> as a Basketball Operations Associate. This was a unique role that allowed her to attend front office meetings and share her unique perspective as a still-active player who was fresh off winning a WNBA title and a gold medal in the FIBA World Cup.<\/p>\n Bird<\/a> appeared with current Nugget Cam Johnson on the latest episode of\u00a0The Young Man and the Three, and she gave some interesting details on what her time in Denver was like and how it came to be in the first place. \u201cI had just finished the 2018 season, we had won, so you\u2019re just on TV more, you\u2019re around more,\u201d\u00a0she said<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cFast forward a month, maybe less, I get a text from Caron Butler. I went to Connecticut with Caron. \u2018Hey, my guy Tim Connolly, he\u2019s the president of the Denver Nuggets, he was wondering if he could talk to you,’\u201d\u00a0Bird added.<\/p>\n At the time, she had no idea what the call would be about, but was pleasantly surprised when Connelly asked her to come visit the team facility and see if they could find a role for her that would be mutually beneficial.<\/p>\n Bird took a tour, met the players, met the coaches, and then was given the choice of where she wanted to work.\u00a0\u201cThey really let me choose in a sense, like \u2018Do you want to be more involved with coaching staff stuff, do you want to be more in front office meetings?’\u201d\u00a0she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI chose the front office because I don\u2019t know the inner workings of a coaching staff, but as a player, I kind of understood what that life was,\u201d Bird noted.<\/p>\n \u201cSo while I probably could have learned a lot more X\u2019s and O\u2019s from Mike Malone, I didn\u2019t know anything about front office work. And I actually don\u2019t know in the moment that I ever wanted to go into coaching, I still don\u2019t know that,\u201d\u00a0the former WNBA champion explained.<\/p>\n Bird\u2019s natural curiosity paid off, as she got to sit in front office meetings and learn the inner workings of an NBA franchise. She\u2019s thankful for her entire time with the Nuggets, but said there was one day in particular that she enjoyed the most.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have a day where all the scouts come into town, all the people that work that you don\u2019t see on a day-to-day, they all come into town, a huge meeting. It was right before the trade deadline, kind of just going through the state of the Nuggets, the state of the league, trade deadline stuff,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was by far \u2026 Tim must have gotten up and taken like 20 calls in that meeting, because the trade deadline was the next day. So that was fascinating,\u201d\u00a0revealed Bird, with almost the same excitement that she talked about.<\/p>\n Bird still closely follows the league, but said,\u00a0\u201cI have a special place for Denver because of my experience there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sue Bird is a living legend, a two-time NCAA champ, four-time WNBA champ and 13-time All-Star. She\u2019s had,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[1753,355,99,61391,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-226764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-denver-nuggets","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-sue-bird","12":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}