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Sue Bird takes WNBA's winningest player title from Lindsay Whalen as career winds down

cassandra negley
Women's basketball reporter
·5 min read
15

It was only a matter of time for Sue Bird to become the league's all-time leader in career wins. The moment came on Wednesday night with a pivotal 88-78 win against the Las Vegas Aces in front of home fans at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. Bird, who formally announced her retirement earlier this month, reached the record 324 wins mark exactly halfway through her final season.

Bird passed Minnesota Lynx great Lindsay Whalen, who won 323 regular season games during her 15-year career with the Connecticut Sun and Minnesota Lynx. Whalen, a 2022 inductee to the Naismith Hall of Fame, won four championships as the point guard of the Lynx dynasty.

They are the only players with 300 regular season wins. Swin Cash and Rebekkah Brunson, Whalen's Lynx teammate, are tied in third with 294.

Bird seeks all-time winningest crown

Whalen still holds the record for most combined wins in the regular season and postseason with 377, per Across the Timeline. Bird, a 19-year veteran, won four WNBA titles in three different decades with the Storm and has 355 combined wins. By season's end, Bird could also take that record from her former peer. But it's a long shot.

The Storm (12-7) have 17 games left in the regular season and winning them all would put her five games away. Under the new playoff format, Bird could play a maximum of 15 games with a maximum of eight wins available.

Possibly most impressive about Bird's mark is that she did it all with one team.

"That's amazing," Storm coach and former Bird teammate Noelle Quinn said after the game. "She would probably say it's because she's old. That's always the response. Just the longevity of an amazing player to have such impact on the game.

"It's not only the assists with Sue, it's making big plays, the big shots. I thought she played great defense tonight. Those intangibles that she brings, but also: She's the GOAT, an amazing player with a long career and deserving of every single record she's about to break because she's played 20-something years."

Bird is also the league's all-time leader in assists (3,142). Ticha Penicheiro is second with 2,600 and Courtney Vandersloot is second in active players (fourth overall) with 2,304.

"It says she's been on a lot of good teams for a very long time," Aces head coach Becky Hammon, who played against Bird, said. "She's always the head of the snake — I mean that in a good way. She is who she is for a reason. She just repeatedly makes the right play, whatever that is."

Bird had 13 points and six assists in the Storm's win on Wednesday. They host the Indiana Fever on Friday.

No. 1 picks galore for Storm, Aces

It was a collection of No. 1 players in Seattle for two of the best teams in the league this season. It was the first time that many first picks played in a game that wasn't an All-Star game in league history, per ESPN Stats and Information.

Bird was taken at the top in the 2002 draft. Also for Seattle was Tina Charles (2010, 181 wins), who made her debut with the team after a contract divorce with the Mercury, Jewell Loyd (2015, 131 wins) and Breanna Stewart (2016, 106 wins).

For the Aces, it's Kelsey Plum (2017, 77 wins), A'ja Wilson (2018, 85 wins) and Jackie Young (2019, 75 wins).

Winningest players in WNBA history

Breanna Stewart and Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm celebrate a 3-pointer by Jewell Loyd against the Las Vegas Aces during the fourth quarter at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle on June 29, 2022. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
Breanna Stewart and Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm celebrate a 3-pointer by Jewell Loyd against the Las Vegas Aces during the fourth quarter at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle on June 29, 2022. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

The top-10 list of winningest regular season WNBA players has only two active ones on it. They're none other than Bird and Taurasi, the two longest-tenured ones in 2022. Taurasi currently ranks seventh with 281 wins and doesn't appear to be leaving the game soon. She ranks fifth with 322 combined regular and postseason victories. And as with Bird, she's also spent her entire career in one place with the Phoenix Mercury.

Behind her in active players on the regular season list is Candace Parker in 14th with 242 wins and DeWanna Bonner is tied for 22nd with 230. Sylvia Fowles, who also announced her retirement this season, is 26th with 223 wins. The final active player in the top-30 is Briann January, who has also announced her retirement. The Storm reserve is tied for 29th with 214 wins.

The longer WNBA seasons — this year it expanded to 36 regular season games per team — and better off-court support give modern-day players better chances at taking over the wins leaderboard.