‘A wonderful trip’
HS coach reflects on Bird’s transcendent career
Bob Mackey coached a teenage Sue Bird for two years at Christ the King High and for even longer with the New York Liberty Belles AAU program, so he has drawn from a healthy reservoir of on-court memories while watching Bird take over the sport in the quarter-century since.
What first comes to mind, though, is a long, dark trip from Queens to Atlantic City, New Jersey, sometime in the mid-1990s. Mackey was driving. The van was packed with teenage basketball players. All were asleep. Except one.
“Sue was never boring,” Mackey said. “She was a live wire. It was pouring rain. You can’t see. But Sue is awake, playing songs, and we’re doing musical trivia. She was just always, like, on. It was OK, no problem. She kept me awake the whole ride. That kid was a nonstop bundle of energy.”
That kid would wind up winning on every stage of basketball, all over the world, from her state high school title, to two national championships at UConn, to four titles with the Seattle Storm, to five Olympic gold medals and beyond.
Bird is now a 41-year-old woman coming down the stretch of her 18th and final season in the WNBA. Her final game in Connecticut is Thursday at Mohegan Sun Arena, where the Storm play the Connecticut Sun.
Mackey, a very involved assistant under Vincent Cannizzaro while Bird was at Christ The King in 1996-98, plans to be in attendance, probably seeing her play in person for the last time. Mackey became head coach at Christ The King — a storied program that has produced so many top players, Tina Charles and Chamique Holdsclaw among them — in 1999-00, the year Bird led UConn to a na
tional title as a sophomore.
“It’s been a wonderful trip that Sue has brought us all on,” said Mackey, who is the athletic director, and still head coach, at Christ The King. “She was a little kid. I saw her play as a seventh-grader and I was floored. Then when she came on board with us, my god, what a pleasure. What a great representative of what girls high school basketball is supposed to be. She hasn’t changed. I know she’s a 41-year-old woman. But we’ll talk, and I still see the kid.”
This is part of the magic of coaching. Do it long enough and you have access to an evolution, of players and of people, even long after they leave your gym.
Bird is now one of the most recognizable players in the world, a leading voice. She has advanced an entire sport and, in addition to becoming one of the most successful Olympians in history, has been the darling of several basketball markets: New York, Connecticut and Seattle.
These journeys start early. Only a few really understand the early stages — family members, coaches, those in the inner circle.
“That came to me on Sunday,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “Paige (Bueckers) was in the gym and I was talking to Paige about her workouts and summer school classes and where she’s going on vacation. And I thought to myself, man, you know how many conversations I’ve had like this with kids when they were either in high school or college? And now some of those kids are 40 years old and I haven’t necessarily lost track of them or contact with them.
“Some of them are better than others at staying in touch, but it’s a really a unique thing that you have if you’re a teacher or a coach. I’m sure you hear teachers talking about kids they’ve had in their classrooms over the years. It really is a unique experience, and maybe that’s why people stay in this business as long as they do and keep trying to hold onto their jobs as long as they can. Because you do get to experience these types of things.”
Mackey spoke this week from a facility in the Poconos, where he was running a camp for about 400 players.
He first saw Bird play as a seventh-grader. He coached Bird during her junior and senior years, with Christ The King winning a New York state championship that second season. And Mackey’s wife, Kelly, was a teacher of Bird’s at Christ The King.
“So you sit there and go, wow, look at this,” Mackey said. “That’s been the fun part, and is still the fun part, of this whole business. She was this happygo-lucky little kid who just pushed the ball and sped by everybody and just was flying up and down the floor. Still plays the same way.
“Let’s face it, the workouts have changed and they’re a whole lot harder and it’s a lot harder to get up the next day, but she really has maintained her physicality, her health, everything. That’s a testament to her will to be the best. Sue is a competitor like no one.”
Mackey said Bird never lost a single sprint in two years of practices. She was equally intense about team trivia competitions that took place on the road.
“The caliber of player and caliber of person, Sue made everybody better,” Mackey said. “She just pushed everybody to be better. Quiet, shy, extremely intelligent, and some things don’t change. But she’s matured into this magnificent woman and she’s still playing. That’s the scary part. She still plays, and still plays really well.”
Christ The King’s state championship team in 1998 had a starting lineup of all seniors.
Bird, the point guard, shared the backcourt with Mary Kacic, who played at Manhattan and is now the coach at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Up front were Maria Edwards, who played at West Virginia; Kathryn Fowler, who was a captain at Miami; and Gillian McGovern, who played at Scranton.
“Everybody went on to play in college,” Mackey said. “Sue just went on to play in a different stratosphere.”
Bird is the WNBA’s all-time leader in assists and games played. She won Olympic gold in 2004, ’08, ’12, ’16 and ’20, WNBA championships in 2004, ’10, ’18 and ’20. A 13-time All-Star, Bird announced in June that she would retire at season’s end.
“She put it off for so long,” Auriemma said. “She doesn’t move the way she did 20 years ago. Who does? She still wins games by controlling the game with her mind. She still wins games by making shots that few others can make under pressure situations. She throws passes that very few others can throw at the right time, to the right person.”
Bird, who sat out the 2013 and 2019 seasons with knee injuries, is averaging 7.9 points and 5.9 assists this season for the Storm (17-9).
During a visit to Connecticut a handful of years ago, Bird addressed her longevity and said she understood questions about retirement. She also wondered aloud, considering advancements in training and nutrition, why those conversations shouldn’t start in a player’s 40s instead of in her 30s.
Bird has meticulously taken care of her body over the years, allowing her to remain productive — and lead the way for others.
Breanna Stewart, a fourtime national champion at UConn and Bird’s teammate with the Storm, was in New York during a recent offseason and needed a place to work out. Bird put Stewart in touch with Mackey, who arranged access for Stewart at the Christ The King gym.
“So Stewie came in and, just like Sue, it took her a good hour and a half of stretching and warming up before she even started, and she was so particular with her warmup and what she did and her focus,” Mackey said. “Sue has had a big influence on a lot of former and current teammates with her work ethic and how she prepares. Who better to learn from?”
Bird will have left the game better than she found it.
“I think the knowledge of walking away when you can still pay, when you’re still a starter, when you’re still one of the best in the league at what you do and coming off another gold medal, you’re walking out on a high, walking out understanding the legacy and the footprints you’re leaving behind,” Auriemma said.
“And then, I’ve got to imagine the next thing is not going to involve coaching, but I can see her being involved in ownership groups or doing things that maybe are more impactful than just a WNBA team. Maybe on a bigger stage, whatever that may be. She’s got a platform that isn’t Connecticut-wide, isn’t college basketballwide and isn’t WNBAwide. She’s got a platform now that’s worldwide. I can imagine her having that kind of an impact in some capacity, whatever that might be.”
Mackey and Auriemma got to know Sue Bird before she was Icon Sue Bird.
“They move on,” Mackey said. “Whether they go on to play like Sue or Tina or Chamique Holdsclaw, or move on to a career as a doctor or lawyer, they all move on. But for a brief moment, for four years, it’s just amazing, and with Sue it’s been 20-plus years of enjoying the ride.”