Does Sue Bird Still Have It? (Yes) | 2022 WNBA Playoffs
Sue Bird may not be in her prime, but she's not a spectator for the Seattle Storm. She's helping them chase a title.
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I’m not sure if y’all have heard this yet, but Sue Bird is retiring at the end of the season. Sue has had an amazing career and her team may just send her out with a title. But she’s not a spectator and this is not an article about her impact on women’s basketball, who she is as a person, or any of that mushy stuff. We’re talking about Sue Bird putting on an incredible performance in Seattle’s series-clinching Game 2 win over the Washington Mystics.
First, we need to establish why Sue’s 18 points and 10 assists is the tape to breakdown. The stats suggest that the Storm won this series on the offensive end. They posted an insane 136.8 offensive rating in Game 2 against the league’s best defense! Washington only allowed a 122.2 offensive rating in their worst defensive performance in the regular season.1 The Storm’s relentless defense contributed to their offense’s dominance by creating unsettled situations to attack, as Sue said in her in-game interview. Still, both offenses far outscored their regular season offensive ratings, and Bird’s performance helps encapsulate everything that the Storm did well on that end.
Scoring
Bird’s 18 points marked her season-high for 2022 and the most efficient 18-plus point performance in her playoff career.2 She also did a lot of her scoring against Alysha Clark who played with Bird for 9 years and knows how Seattle likes to play. So, Bird and the Storm had to get creative.
They used flare screens to get Bird open looks at the top of the key after using her in just 12 flare screen possessions during the regular season, per Synergy. None of her made threes came off high flare screens this season.3 She may have improvised on the set from Game 1. She gives Clark a little shove and steps behind Breanna Stewart’s dive for a three.
On the second possession of Game 2, Bird hit another three off the set. She moves fast to get Clark backpedaling, then tosses a perfectly placed lob pass to Breanna Stewart. Tina Charles lays a solid screen on Clark and Bird sinks the open three.
In the third quarter, the Storm ran a counter. Bird seemingly sets up the flare to the other side with a pass to Charles and a jab step to Stewart. To her credit, Clark doesn’t bite that hard and splits the difference between Bird’s potential paths. Bird has the jump on Clark but not enough space to get a shot off, so she drives into a running jumper that falls. The playoffs are about adding wrinkles to fool great defense. Bird and Noelle Quinn did it wonderfully here.
Like everyone on the Storm, Bird benefited greatly from Breanna Stewart’s gravity. Stewie put up back-to-back 20-point double-doubles in this series. Using Her Hoop Stats’ reSEARCH tool and hand counting, I came up with this list of players who have done that: Brittney Griner, 20184; Elena Delle Donne, 2018; Candace Parker, 4x, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2017; Tamika Catchings, 4x, 2002, 2008, 2009, 2014; Yolanda Griffith, 2x, 2001 2003. Welcome back to the Playoffs, Breanna.
The Mystics had to shift their whole defense whenever she touched the ball and send extra defenders often. On this play, Bird inbounds the ball to Stewart on the right wing. As Bird slips a screen, you can see literally every DC defender looking to Stewart and ready to help.
Bird clears, so Stewart can work on Myisha Hines-Allen. Stewart gets a step on Hines-Allen towards baseline, but Williams traps the box and pushes her back up the floor. Washington is in good position to recover here with Clark splitting her assignments on the weakside. There’s just one problem: Walker-Kimbrough looks at Stewart just a bit too long after providing nail help. Bird takes advantage by cutting toward Stewart. Then, they run what Coach Quinn calls an “uphill DHO,” but what you’ll often see labeled as a grenade. Walker-Kimbrough is a step too late and Bird has just enough space to nail the three.
The Storm use this action as part of their flow, as Coach Quinn explained on the Basketball Podcast. The action optimizes Stewart’s big games by creating misdirection and punishing the defender one pass away for doing their job. Bird (and Jewell Loyd, for that matter) is an expert at this kind of shot. The Storm’s offense is scary right now because they have a bevy of good options and full understanding of how to attack whatever a defense throws at them.
As I mentioned early, the Storm’s defense played a huge role in feeding the offense. According to PBPStats, Seattle scored 1.38 points per possession (ppp) off missed field goals and 1.05 ppp off made FGs in Game 2. For context, Seattle’s offense put up 1.15 ppp off misses and 0.95 ppp off makes in the regular season while DC’s defense gave up just 0.99 ppp after misses and 0.89 ppp after makes. So, even though they did allow the Mystics to score more efficiently than usual, the Storm capitalized on the misses more often and effectively.
These numbers don’t necessarily pertain to the steal-and-score that I’m about to talk about. This play just highlights one of the things that I loved about Seattle’s defense in Game 2. When the Storm saw a potential way to create chaos, they attacked it with the knowledge that their teammates could probably cover for them if the gamble went south. Here, Bird sees EDD popping as both Steph Talbot and Charles stay with Natasha Cloud. She just leaves Walker-Kimbrough alone in the corner because she’s probably seen Cloud throw that pass back hundreds of times on film and Stewart can navigate the potential fallout. She beats the ball to the spot and it’s two points for a pumped-up Bird.
Playmaking
Bird’s playmaking in this series was sublime. She’s tossed 12 assists with just one turnover against Washington. That’s a 12.0 AST/TO ratio over this very small sample. Only two players in WNBA playoff history finished the playoffs with at least 12 assists and a ratio that high (Katie Douglas in 2003 and Leilani Mitchell in 2015).5 Her assists also don’t capture all the hockey assists (passes that lead to an assist) or any of the times where she directs a play for a teammate.
Gabby Williams was Bird’s partner-in-crime against Washington. Williams scored 10 points off 5 assists from Bird, mainly from 4 Bird assists leading to 8 Williams points in Game 2. They were Seattle’s most productive duo over the two games. Yet, Williams ranked fourth among Bird assist recipients in the regular season. So, what gives? The answer lies in Washington’s need to load towards Seattle’s other threats. You’ve probably already seen this first assist where Bird drops a no-look dime to Williams for a layup. Cloud is providing early nail help on the empty wing pick-and-roll between Bird and Stewart. The action is well-defended by the on-ball defenders. But Cloud is reading Bird’s eyes off the screen and well…
On the next one, Breanna Stewart beats EDD middle after a screen by Ezi Magbegor. Here again, we see four Mystics focus on Stewart’s drive. Clark crashes hard to the opposite elbow, leaving Bird open at the top of the key. The Storm don’t just stand still, though. Bird and Williams move together to the left to make Clark’s close out longer. Atkins has to close out to Bird on the three-point line. With Cloud sticking to Jewell Loyd tightly in the corner and Shakira Austin tailing a cutting Ezi Magbegor out of the lane, Williams ends up open at the rim. All five players have some claim to the creation of this shot for Seattle. That’s beautiful basketball.
There’s a lot more to be said about the Storm’s playmaking and, frankly, about Gabby Williams’ play in this series. But let’s end this on something subtle about Sue Bird. Here, she comes across the court on an Iverson cut in front of Ariel Atkins. She maintains her pace into the empty wing pick-and-roll with Stewart. The speed plus Stewart’s seal forces Clark into a mismatch with Stewart in the post and EDD to close out to Bird. Seattle had Bird open for a three and Stewart with a small on her (a very good post defender, but still).
But it all turned out to be a decoy. Jewell Loyd comes off a weakside stagger to hit a three at the top of the key. It was maybe Bird’s easiest assist all night. She looked inside for Stewart’s basket cut, but Clark is all over her. Bird’s eye discipline freezes the tagger, Ariel Atkins, at the nail. Atkins is caught too deep by the time Loyd catches. The play is a great example from Bird of how to go through reads. She runs the play hard, looks at her own shot, looks down to Stewart, then dumps to Loyd at the perfect time. She set all of the options up, then just picked the best one.
I hope you got two things out of this article. First, getting to see Sue Bird play right now is a treat and not just because it’s the last time we’ll see her. It’s just cool to see a player at the peak of her mental ability. Bird knows all the angles, all the tricks, and how to find advantages on the court. She’s not in her physical prime, yet she’s still able to put up big numbers in a playoff game. Second, the Storm’s offense provides a great example of a healthy basketball ecosystem. Just in these plays, we saw the Storm throw wrinkles into their offense, score off turnovers, optimize Stewart’s gravity, flow into easy cuts for Williams, and employ weakside action. They have a varied attack that continually changes seamlessly without the coach needing to get involved. Bird helps create that ecosystem with her play and her on-the-court coaching while also benefiting from it. Let’s see if they can keep it up against the Aces.
in an 86-94 loss to Dallas at home on 5/13.
80% effective field goal, 1.5 points per possession, 1.64 points per shooting attempt are all career-best for Sue in these high-scoring games. She also scored 18 points on just 18.5% usage rate, a career-low rate in such games.
H/t Calvin Wetzel for looking at all of Bird’s threes.
She did it for 3 consecutive games against the Storm. FREE BG!
This stat may be meaningless, but it’s kind of fun.
Thanks for this. It makes all those podcasts I've listened to denigrating her play and calling her over-rated just as wrong as I thought they were when I heard them. She plays with an intelligence I think is unique in the game. No one sees the court and reads it the way she can, and does. Thanks for including all the video evidence. Cheers.