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Mechelle VoepelESPN.com
As the first female basketball players to win five Olympic gold medals – leading the Americans to a seventh straight gold on a historic final day at the Tokyo Games – Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi also solidified the title awarded to them by the coach who brought the duo together two decades ago.
“They are two of the greatest teammates in the history of the sport,” said Geno Auriemma of UConn. “Even if you’ve only used UConn, or only the Olympics, or only Europe. Add all three, and no one gets close.
“If this is their last Olympics together, winning a gold medal just got a lot harder [for U.S. women’s basketball]. “
“Si” may seem like an unnecessary qualifier given that Bird will be 41 in October and Taurasi is 39. Although Bird has said these will be their last Olympics, the backcourt duo have been at the top of the sport for so long, it’s hard to imagine Team USA without them.
“We always say that we are lucky to be able to do it together,” Taurasi said. “There is that confidence and that confidence factor that you have.”
Maybe they will have a final round next year at the FIBA Women’s World Cup. This is the sort of thing Bird and Taurasi would consider, as they took their commitment to the national team as a solemn oath, which is as dear to them as anything in their epic careers. They played two seasons together at UConn and several years abroad in Russia. But their most iconic duo have worn the senior national team’s red, white and blue in five Olympics and four World Cups.
Including Saturday’s 90-75 victory over Japan, Bird has 10 medals between the Olympics and the World Cup, more than any male or female basketball player. All are gold, except the 2006 World Cup bronze. Taurasi is a medal behind her. Bird first arrived at the 2002 World Cup when she was a Seattle Storm rookie, and Taurasi was a UConn junior.
“They have done so much for USA Basketball that the rest of us the players keep trying to reciprocate and make sure they realize how much we appreciate them,” said the forward. American Breanna Stewart, who is also Bird’s teammate with Storm.
A host of talents – including quadruple Olympic gold medalists Lisa Leslie, Teresa Edwards (she also won an Olympic bronze medal) and current squad member Sylvia Fowles – have led the way and helped the States United to win nine of the 11 women’s Olympic tournaments in which they have competed, and their winning streak seven times in a row is the longest gold medal streak a country has seen in any Olympic team sport . But no player has contributed as much to America’s gold harvest as Bird and Taurasi: 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020.
“They’re a big part of the glue to the whole system,” Leslie said. “It used to be babies coming in. They were open to listening, respectful of older players. That’s the culture.
“I believe they carried the torch beautifully.”
There are many famous pro sports duos: Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. Joe Montana and Jerry Rice. Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier. Misty May-Treanor and Kerry Walsh Jennings. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
But Bird and Taurasi, who will both someday be at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, are different. What are the odds that two players from opposing ribs, born 20 months apart, end up in the same college and then be both good enough and healthy enough to stay on top of their sport for five Olympic cycles? The two also complement each other so well: Taurasi is the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer who is also an expert passer, while Bird is the league’s career assist leader, also known for his shot-like shot. a dagger.
It has been a fantastic confluence of athletic talent, ambition, personality and commitment. One of the closest comparisons in basketball are Bill Russell and KC Jones, who led the University of San Francisco to two NCAA titles, winning gold at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics with the United States, then eight NBA titles with the Boston Celtics.
There are also Georgia teammates Edwards and Katrina McClain who reached the NCAA Championship game in 1985 and went on to play three Olympics together.
Bird and Taurasi reunited at UConn in the fall of 2000: Bird a junior from Long Island who had won a national championship with the Huskies earlier that year and Taurasi the highly anticipated rookie from California. They lost in the 2001 Final Four, but nothing could stop them the following season. They beat Tennessee so well in the 2002 National Semifinals that Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt went to the UConn locker room to tell them they were one of the better teams. that she has ever seen.
Bird was the first pick in the 2002 WNBA Draft and the guiding liner for current USA coach Dawn Staley at the FIBA World Cup later in the year. Taurasi won two more NCAA titles and was herself a No.1 draft pick by Phoenix, then joined Bird and Staley on the 2004 Olympic team. Their only loss in a major competition with USA Basketball occurred in Russia in the 2006 World Cup semi-finals.
Each has been the long-standing face of its WNBA franchise. Bird, in his 18th WNBA season in Seattle, won four WNBA titles, while Taurasi, in his 17th season in Phoenix, has three. Bird missed two seasons with knee injuries; Taurasi took time off to rest after years of non-stop play between the WNBA and the overseas.
The overseas part of their career was far from being in the spotlight in Russia’s freezing winters. They lamented the missed milestones with family and friends back home, but it paid off so well that they made a commitment to do so. They played together in three different Russian teams and won five EuroLeague championships.
Bird said the few feuds they had didn’t come when they were playing UConn or USA Basketball.
“It was when we were in Russia,” she said. “At one point you get fed up with people, or an argument arises that goes a little too far. Maybe a little too much wine. You take your space and then you wake up the next day and play. But we got it. apologize to each other before. “
Taurasi said she could count on one hand when they were really mad at each other.
“And that’s probably on the dumbest s — ever,” she said. “We may have different opinions, but we always understand how to work on things. We take that attitude and put it in every team we’ve been with.”
Auriemma has coached Bird and Taurasi in two Olympics and two World Cups, and said he is especially proud of their longevity and the mental toughness it takes to continue to surpass themselves year after year.
Staley likes their maturity and reliability: “They’ve played everywhere. They’ve been through it all. There’s nothing they haven’t seen.
“They want to play perfectly. They always want to be coached, and it’s an amazing thing at that level, when their intellect is off the charts.”
Bird said wearing the Team USA jersey was as important to her as ever, regardless of the size of her medal collection. At 15, she went with AAU teammates to see the national team play a show in 1995 while preparing for the Atlanta Olympics. Watching American point guard Jennifer Azzi, in particular, inspired Bird, who called it the first “must see, whatever” moment.
“I was like, ‘This is this player who is kind of the same height as me, the same build, and she can do that,” said Bird. “And remember, there wasn’t a WNBA yet. So for us in this generation you really saw the Olympics as the ultimate goal.”
Bird couldn’t have known that 26 years later, she would be celebrating a fifth Olympic gold medal with one of her best friends. Bird and Taurasi have been “must see, whatever” inspirations for countless children.
Taurasi jokes that she deals with the weight of the story, her place in the game and everything that she and Bird have shared by “not doing a lot of thinking. I’m very focused on the things I do. gotta get finished. “
What they did was remarkable.
So much has changed in the world and in women’s basketball over the past two decades. But the bond between Bird and Taurasi has not changed, bringing a sense of confidence and determination to the national team that everyone who has played with them has appreciated.
“There are some people in life that you get along with really well, and you have so many shared experiences that you can relate a little bit more to yourself,” Taurasi said of his friendship with Bird. “That’s what the last 20 years have been.”
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