Bird comes back to earth after heady days at UConn

For the first time in 40 games, for the first time in almost 15 months, Sue Bird's team lost a basketball game. The feeling was so foreign it was as if someone had to explain to her what it meant. Her team had fewer points than the opponent. There must have been a mistake.

Sue Bird's teams win. If you were choosing sides for a pickup game, you'd take her first and hold on to the court for the rest of the day.

Bird is a winner. Like Spiderman at the box office. Like Tiger Woods in the majors. Like "The Sopranos" on Sunday nights. After four years playing point guard at Connecticut, she expects winning, the way the rest of us expect sunrise.

But yesterday her new team, the Storm, lost an exhibition to the Utah Starzz 70-68. Sunrise was postponed.

"I don't know how to react," she said, only half-seriously, as she finished a Fig Newton. "I know it's just an exhibition game, but I'm not too fond of losing. But I consider this a learning experience. I mean, it doesn't go on the record."

Call it an unofficial loss, but by the end of August, she probably will have lost more games than she did in her four seasons at UConn.

Bird, the No. 1 WNBA draft pick, is in a brave new world, and unless you play for the Los Angeles Sparks, you can expect losses in this league.

"Sue's different," said her father, Herschel, who sat courtside for his daughter's first professional home game. "If she were to miss a game-winning shot and the team loses, it would bother her for a couple of hours, but that's it. I think that makes her better. Some players, if they lose, they think they've failed, and they're not able to sleep for a week. But that's not Sue."

You know all the stories about the superstars who live in the gym? How their whole focus in life, their raison d'etre is their game? How they sacrificed, friends, family and relationships in their pursuit of perfection?

Those stories don't apply to Sue Bird.

It's not that she isn't committed. You don't earn the Naismith Player of the Year award in college basketball, as she did this year, without a work ethic. You don't collect more hardware than Bob Vila without a flame that burns hot in your gut.

It's just that Bird knows when to turn on the flame. And when to extinguish it. To every practice there is an end. To every life there is more than the game.

"It sounds funny," her father said, "but basketball is not Sue's life. She's a funny kid. She has no ego. You know how you hear about kids staying in the gym and taking a hundred shots, she was never like that. We laugh about it. She's never demanded that much of herself. The situation's demanded it of her, rather than she."

In other words, this Bird is no Larry. She isn't a gym rat. She's a star with a life.

"Even at Connecticut, when we weren't on the floor, trust me, we weren't talking basketball," Bird said. "I'm just a typical kid who likes hanging out with my friends, going to the movies, to the beach. Just doing stuff. But I also know that this is my job now and, to a certain extent, I have to treat it like a business."

In her first home game, Bird looked nervous early, committing four turnovers in the first half, but she made 4 of 5 field-goal attempts and finished with 11 points, two steals and four assists.

And even though she lost, she relished the idea of a close game. Winning the way she did at UConn, by 20, 30, 40 points, night after night, can dull your game.

"I'm definitely looking forward to playing in games like today's," she said. "It's never fun to lose, but a game like this is fun to play. The close games are where you make a lot of memories. The situations you get in tight games are the ones that bring out the best in you."

Bird is the face of the future of women's basketball. Forget the high-wire act. Today's game is about taking players off the dribble, snapping hair-trigger passes to the big people open near the basket, shaking on a cross-over dribble, then launching a laser three.

This is Sue Bird's game. More Allen Iverson than Vince Carter.

"Sue, for her whole life from age 7 or 8, never has played well when her team has been vastly superior," her father said. "I think Sue is capable of playing better at this level. She's much better in a tight game, where there's two minutes to go, then she is when her team's winning by 20.

"I thought this (college) season, until the last four games of the playoffs she didn't play that well. But after she started winning all the awards, she started playing better. It was like she said to herself, 'Hey I've got to show these people.' Now in this league, no matter who you are, whether you're a sub-.500 team or a championship team, these games are wars. And I think that's when Sue's at her best."

Sue Bird's team lost a basketball game yesterday. Trust me, she's over it now.

Steve Kelley can be reached at 206-464-2176 or at skelley@seattletimes.com.