He is one of the great friendships in sports. But the longest rivalry between best friends in WNBA history is ending.
The Seattle Storm’s Sue Bird, in her 19th and final WNBA season, and the Phoenix Mercury’s Diana Taurasi, in her 18th season, will meet Friday (10 pm ET, NBA TV) in Phoenix. So it will be the last time unless their teams meet in the playoffs.
Tamika Catchings, Swin Cash, Lindsay Whalen, and Candice Dupree met 46 times.
Bird and Taurasi have met 14 times in the postseason, with Taurasi holding an 8-6 lead. Bird and Storm, 41, have won four WNBA titles, while Taurasi, 40, and Mercury have won three. Bird, the WNBA’s all-time assists leader, has played 570 games, a league record. Taurasi, the league’s all-time leading scorer, will appear in its 500th game on Friday.
The Guardsmen grew up on opposite shores: Bird from Long Island, New York and Taurasi from Southern California. Their first official game was 22 years ago on the same team: on November 12, 2000, in Hartford, Connecticut, when her UConn Huskies beat the Georgia Lady Bulldogs 99-70. The bird was a junior who had helped lead UConn to the program’s second NCAA title seven months earlier. Taurasi was a freshman wunderkind who made a speeding layup early in college with a spin and transition move that left Bird thinking, “There’s a new sheriff in town.”
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