{"id":89641,"date":"2025-08-17T13:49:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T13:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/89641\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T13:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T13:49:09","slug":"storm-to-unveil-statue-of-sue-bird-outside-climate-pledge-arena-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/89641\/","title":{"rendered":"Storm to unveil statue of Sue Bird outside Climate Pledge Arena Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SEATTLE \u2014 Basketball legend, Sue Bird has a long and decorated career in Seattle, but on Sunday Bird will receive another honor, a statue outside of Climate Pledge Arena.<\/p>\n<p>The unveiling will take place during a special press conference at Climate Pledge Arena. KOMO News will livestream the press conference beginning at 9:15 a.m. Sunday.<\/p>\n<p> That same day, the Storm is set to play the Phoenix Mercury, at 3 p.m. and team officials are calling the match the \u201cForever Sue\u201d game.<\/p>\n<p>Fans are encouraged to arrive early to celebrate the statue with a community fan fest at noon, and the first 7,500 fans will receive an action photo drawing of Bird.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor over two decades, the city of Seattle supported me, both on and off the court. It\u2019s because of this community that Seattle will forever hold a special place in my heart. This statue isn\u2019t just for me, it\u2019s for anyone out there hoping to one day pursue their passions and live out their dreams,\u201d said Bird.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/storm.wnba.com\/news\/sue-statue\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"https:\/\/storm.wnba.com\/news\/sue-statue\" class=\"themeColorForLinks\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Seattle Storm is the first WNBA team in history to dedicate a statue<\/a> to a former player. <\/p>\n<p>The statue was created by Julie Rotblatt-Amrany, according to Storm officials she is the same sculptor behind other Seattle sports statues including those of Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez and Dave Niehaus at T-Mobile Park.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSue is basketball royalty and a Seattle icon. We are thrilled she will have a permanent place outside the home of Seattle basketball, Climate Pledge Arena, where she finished her career,\u201d said Hewan Teshome, General Counsel of Climate Pledge Arena.<\/p>\n<p>Before retiring and becoming a minority owner of the Storm in 2022, Bird spent all of her 22 seasons in the WNBA with the Storm.<\/p>\n<p>Drafted No. 1 overall by the Storm in 2002 she led the team to win four WNBA championships in 2004, 2010, 2018, and 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Bird is also an Olympic gold medalist, WNBA All-Star, Hall of Famer and the Storm retired her number in 2023.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE \u2014 Basketball legend, Sue Bird has a long and decorated career in Seattle, but on Sunday Bird&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[402,61392,1075,4676,99,26018,61391,61393,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-89641","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-climate-pledge-arena","10":"tag-community","11":"tag-seattle-storm","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-statue","14":"tag-sue-bird","15":"tag-unveiling","16":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89641","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=89641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}