Playing for Team USA is a great chance to stand atop the basketball world and spend time alongside the best of the best. But it's also a pressure cooker. Anything less than the gold medal is seen as a massive failure and leads to huge changes for the next iteration of the team. Sue Bird can tell you all about it.
Bird won nine gold medals across the Olympics and FIBA World Cups from 2002 to 2020. She pieced together one of the best careers in the history of USA Basketball, establishing herself as a starter for the national team by 2006. On top of the many conquests she helped lead, the legendary point guard also won bronze at the 2006 World Cup, their second finish below the top two spots up to that point since 1986.
In an appearance on the 7PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony & The Kid Mero show, Bird explained how playing on Team USA was a very uncomfortable experience because of the stark change in roles. She also mentioned not having TV timeouts, a critical time for players to catch their breaths.
Sue Bird's admission on difficulty of playing for Team USA
“This is my blanket statement for USA basketball. It is the most uncomfortable basketball I've ever played,” Bird said. “You're never comfortable. I would argue there's maybe a player or two, max, on a team that gets to do exactly what they normally do. It's usually your best scorer, best player. They get to be who they are no matter what. Everybody else? Uncomfortable the whole time. You're trying to be this, you're trying to do that, you're trying to get yourself going but this is your role and it’s just this f**king dance. I tell people who join the team, newbies, [that] if you’re uncomfortable, you’re doing it right.”
Even though Bird was one of the best players in the women’s basketball scene for a long time, she played with all the rest of the American greats, too. Even as a lead ball-handler and playmaker, scaling back her role cost her some control of the offense. Any difficulties she had adapting to her new roles didn’t slow the program down, though, as she became one of the most decorated players in Team USA history.
In this year's Olympics, Team USA is seeing its typical level of success on the men’s and women's side. The men beat Brazil in the first game of the knockout stage and the women face Nigeria in their first game of the stage.
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