Sue Bird hopes that when she’s in her 50s and 60s, she can be like a former NBA player who currently throws out opinions on television. One model Bird sees for herself: Charles Barkley. She remembers multiple instances of hearing the Naismith Hall of Famer talk about his playing days on TNT’s “Inside the NBA.”

“He’s like, ‘Oh, I had to fly commercial. I didn’t have these charter flights.’ Or, ‘Oh, these guys are making $40 million. Like, my contract was only —I don’t know, $10 million.’ And he kind of sounds disgruntled,” Bird said on NPR’s Fresh Air last month.

She wants to one day be able to toss out back-in-my-day tales. “I’ve always joked, I hope I’m that disgruntled athlete because that means all the blood, sweat and tears was for something,” she said. “It means the game has grown.”

Bird retired after two decades in the WNBA following the 2022 season. She hasn’t been out of the league even two full years (Bird technically jumped back in this April when she joined the Storm’s ownership group), but the league she’ll watch this summer is already in a better place than it was when she retired.

Changes — both momentous and minute — are already aplenty as the 28th regular season begins Tuesday. For years, as Bird and recently retired Candace Parker graced the hardwood, the WNBA chipped away at areas of growth. But now the pace of the adjustments is explosive.

“To be very honest, the impact of the wave right now is more profound than I thought it was going to be,” Storm co-owner Lisa Brummel said. “It got to be a bigger wave a lot faster than what I think we projected it to be. And wow, I’ll say it feels amazing.”

“Expansions were always in the design. The moment has arrived where the investment matches, finally, us being able to put these ideas to fruition.”

—@chiney on the growth of the WNBA 📈 pic.twitter.com/Y6egBKMcgY

— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) May 10, 2024

Television viewership numbers have skyrocketed across women’s basketball. April’s WNBA Draft averaged a record 2.47 million viewers, a 307 percent increase over last year, and it was the most-viewed WNBA telecast since 2000. The first preseason exhibition for Chicago Sky rookies Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso didn’t air on traditional television, but more than 500,000 viewers tuned in to a phone stream from a resourceful fan. It seems like a harbinger of what will come in the regular season, which tips off Tuesday.

“The growth is happening so fast,” said Cheryl Reeve, the Minnesota Lynx’s coach and president of basketball operations. “It’s so accelerated. And I’ve been saying this in our own organization, that business as usual isn’t going to work anymore.”

The early viewership returns reflect the strengthened link between the college and professional games. Cardoso and the South Carolina Gamecocks’ win over Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes in the 2024 national championship game averaged 18.9 million viewers, making it the most viewed women’s college basketball game ever and the most viewed basketball game (college or professional in men’s or women’s basketball) since 2019. The tournament was up 121 percent from 2023.

With a high-profile rookie class entering the league, WNBA attendance is swelling, too. No team had ever sold out its season ticket package in the offseason, but three teams (Las Vegas, Atlanta and Dallas) did this year. Three games have also been moved to bigger venues to accommodate more fans who want to see Clark play.

How players arrive at those contests will be changing as well. WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced last week that the league plans to add charter flights on a full-time basis sometime this season. The news came as the league’s existing charter policy appeared increasingly untenable in the long term.

Clark and her Indiana Fever teammates traveled to Dallas for their first preseason game on a commercial airline and were greeted by a few fans and media members. They experienced no travel or security issues on their first road trip of the year, according to a team spokesperson. But one video clip showing Clark and center Aliyah Boston passing by a luggage carousel, with a member of the organization’s security team present, gained more than 2 million views. It served as a reminder of their current conditions.

Engelbert was uncommitted about when exactly a full-charter program would be implemented. She said the new travel program, which will cost about $25 million per year for the next two seasons, will launch “as soon as we can logistically get planes in places.” Still, the news of private travel was cause for celebration.

Lynx guard Kayla McBride called the change “a breath of fresh air.” Minnesota forward Napheesa Collier noted that with viewership increasing across women’s basketball, it was imperative to make the adjustment to protect player privacy.

“All these players in these spaces are becoming so popular that it really is about (safety) as much as it’s about recovery,” she said.

Even before Engelbert’s announcement, franchises around the league recognized the importance of increasing security. According to a person with knowledge of the Chicago Sky’s plans, after not traveling with security last season, the franchise will travel with security this season. Every WNBA team will travel with security personnel on its commercial flights, for as long as they remain the standard.

There has also been additional security around the Sky at practices, which take place at a public facility in suburban Chicago. Sachs Recreation Center wrote in an email, obtained by The Athletic, to its community members that beginning April 29, two police officers would be onsite during all Sky practices for the remainder of the season. Their presence is new this year and the change appears likely to have been driven by the Sky’s desire to bolster its player safety.

Fever general manager Lin Dunn said Indiana was taking similar precautions to ensure every member of her franchise would be safe when flying commercial. In addition to having a full security team at home games, the Fever will be traveling with multiple full-time security members, employed by Pacers Sports and Entertainment, on all road trips, the team spokesperson added. Multiple members of their security team will also be present at ancillary team events, like they were at Indiana’s promotional photo shoot in downtown Indianapolis last week.

Those changes are reflective of a new era in the WNBA. Breanna Stewart, the No. 1 pick in 2016, recalled taking photos and signing autographs at airports without a security detail present during her rookie season.

The travel adjustments demonstrate a commitment to improving player experiences. New facilities provide another significant boost. By season’s end, the Storm and Mercury will have opened new spaces. The Storm debuted their 50,000-square foot performance center in April, equipped with state-of-the-art strength and conditioning equipment, a health and wellness suite, and an aquatics room — all of it designed and engineered by a group that was 85 percent women and people of color. The Mercury’s will be part of one of the largest developments for a professional sports organization in the country, according to the franchise. It is expected to open by the time they host the mid-July All-Star Game.

Our new home 💚⛈️ pic.twitter.com/DHjRvHFEFR

— Seattle Storm (@seattlestorm) April 18, 2024

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It should come as no surprise, then, that both added stars: Seattle signed 2016 league MVP Nneka Ogwumike and four-time first-team All-WNBA guard Skylar Diggins-Smith, while Phoenix bolstered its roster with 2021 Finals MVP Kahleah Copper and All-WNBA defensive team guard Natasha Cloud.

Having already become the first franchise to win consecutive titles in 21 years, the Las Vegas Aces will look to win a third straight this summer. Expect a standout season from their star, A’ja Wilson, who Nike announced on Saturday would be getting her own signature sneaker and clothing collection in 2025. Wilson is one of just over a dozen WNBA players ever to have a signature shoe and the first Black WNBA player to get a signature shoe since 2010.

All told, as Engelbert prepares to give the Aces their rings Tuesday night, she is glowing when thinking about the state of the WNBA. With league revenue having reportedly doubled since 2019, she said they have “huge investment” coming in through corporate and media partnerships. (The league’s existing media rights deal with ESPN ends after the 2025 season, and a new CBA could come into effect in 2026.) At April’s Draft, which was held in front of fans for the first time in eight years, feeling the positive momentum Engelbert said the WNBA was “ready for what’s next.”

GO DEEPER

WNBA to award Toronto expansion team: Reports

Expansion into new markets is part of what’s to come. A 13th franchise will begin play in the Bay Area in 2025, while a 14th team is reportedly set to launch in Toronto in 2026.

“We are witnessing a transformational moment in sports,” Engelbert said, “that we may not experience for generations.”

Bird, too, feels the added buzz. She said the sport has crossed a cultural cachet line. For that reason, it might not take Bird, 43, another seven years to become a semi-crotchety pundit. She might be able to tell stories about the old days before she even knows it.

(Photo of Caitlin Clark, Aliyah Boston and Temi Fagbenle: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)

The WNBA’s new Golden State franchise has found its identity.

The team will be known as the Golden State Valkyries, as the league’s first expansion team since 2008 revealed their name, brand and look on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday. The Atlanta Dream was the last franchise to be added to the WNBA. 

Valkyries is a name that comes from Norse mythology, and it fits perfectly with their affiliate team: the Golden State Warriors. 

The team’s press release said that in Norse mythology, Valkyries are “warrior women who are fearless and unwavering,” and that’s what they want to be on the court. 

“This moment is so much bigger than Golden State. It’s so much bigger than the Valkyries,” Valkyries president Jess Smith told “GMA.” “What we are seeing happening in women’s sports right now is just the beginning of the sustainability and incredible growth around the game and to have expansion in the W.”

The Valkyries, though, won’t be kicking off their inaugural campaign on Tuesday like the rest of the league. They will begin in 2025 at the Chase Center in San Francisco. 

As for the team’s color scheme, “Valkyrie Violet” was chosen along with black. Valkryie Violet was chosen to symbolize “power, ambition, nobility and women’s empowerment.”

A detail of the WNBA logo is seen on a basketball during warmups between the Seattle Storm and the Connecticut Sun at Climate Pledge Arena on June 20, 2023 in Seattle, Washington.  (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

Their logo has features that incorporate the iconic “Bay Bridge,” which connects Oakland and San Francisco. The team’s practice facility will be in Oakland, while they play their games in San Francisco, so having that connectivity was paramount for the franchise. 

“The outer shape of the logo is a V, reinforcing the V in Valkyries while symbolizing the unity of a group of Valkyries in flight,” the press release read. 

“When you think of the Bay Area, you think of the region that leads the world in innovative and progressive at the same time,” Smith continued. “And we think about what’s happening in women’s sports and being able to marry those together, it’s going to be really powerful. This ownership group likes to win in everything they do but with intention, and that’s how we’re going to build the Valkyries and build this brand.”

A detail view of the WNBA logo on a game ball used during a WNBA preseason game between the New York Liberty and the Connecticut Sun on May 10, 2023, at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, CT.  (Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

To welcome the team to the Bay Area, a “Valkryie Block Party” will be thrown on May 18 at Thrive City, which is part of the Chase Center.

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Layshia Clarendon wasn’t used to having free time in the summer. Usually around this time, they would be in the middle of the grind of a WNBA season, a grueling schedule that consisted of games, practices and treatment, which didn’t leave much room for anything else. But then in 2022, Clarendon was cut by the Minnesota Lynx.

Clarendon spent the summer at home in the Bay Area, savoring every moment of a season they hadn’t experienced in more than 10 years. Hanging out with family, being on a boat, going to music festivals and the market. For Clarendon, it was a beautiful, if rare, time.

“I was like, ‘Wow, this is what everyone does in the summer?’ This is so much fun,” said Clarendon , who identifies as non-binary. “… People are really outside.”

Yet there were also dark days.

Clarendon normally loves to follow the WNBAout of a pure love of the game and the league. But in that 2022 summer, Clarendon couldn’t watch a game.

“It was just too hard,” said Clarendon, who is 33.

It was the first time since entering the league in 2013 that Clarendon wasn’t on a team. Despite a successful 2021 season in Minnesota, Clarendon began to question if their career was over. If they could still play the game at a high enough level. For the first time, Clarendon was truly wondering if they had enough left in the tank, had enough drive and energy.

“People don’t talk about that a lot … just the volatility of this league … how much perseverance you have to have to play in this league,” said Clarendon, who begins her second season with the Sparks and 11th in the WNBA on Wednesday night in the season opener against Atlanta. “It’s really difficult emotionally and physically.”

It was ultimately Clarendon’s child, known publicly as Baby C, who helped them through depression by playing together on a Little Tikes hoop. Baby C would pass the ball, and Clarendon would shoot.

In these small moments, seeing Baby C’s joy from playing basketball, reminded Clarendon of their own passion for the game. Love for the competition. Love for everything about the game. This was their game.

“No matter what anyone does, or what any GM has to say, I play this game,” said Clarendon, who starred at Cajon High in San Bernardino before playing at California. “I get to take control of my narrative. I get to come back and make this L.A. team and take my story back.”

Sparks head coach Curt Miller was honest with Clarendon when they were invited to training camp.

“It’s going to be a competitive camp,” Clarendon recalls him saying. “But show us what you got.”

Clarendon was fully betting on themselves. They knew they had to prove they were good enough to make the team, but they had come to realize that every year was a tryout in the WNBA. Clarendon wasn’t taking that for granted anymore.

They not only made the final roster for the Sparks, but they reminded everyone of their skills. Clarendon had arguably the best season of their career in 2023 with career highs in three-point percentage, free-throw percentage and steals. They also averaged 11.1 points, their highest since their lone All-Star season in 2017.

Clarendon also emerged as a leader for the Sparks, a theme that has reoccurred not just through their WNBA career, but really throughout life.

“I think it really just comes from who I am, and my deep love for people,” Clarendon said. “I love people, I love this game, and I want to make people better. I think that’s the best thing a point guard can be because … ultimately, it’s your job to make everyone around you better.”

A lot of people might think of a leader as the center of attention, but that’s not Clarendon. For them, being a leader is about attention to detail. It’s about making a cut on the court because they know it’ll get someone else open. It’s about sending a text to teammates who were waived. It’s about being a mentor to Aari McDonald and showing her the ropes as a young point guard. It’s about building relationships and showing up for people off the court.

She’ll help lead a team with two prized rookies in center Cameron Brink and forward Rickea Jackson, who were selected second and fourth, respectively, in the draft this summer.

“I’ve played every role in this league,” Clarendon said. “I know what it’s like when you’re a bench player, I know what it’s like when you’re a starter. I know what it’s like when you don’t play a lot of minutes and have to do cardio afterwards. I know what it’s like to be the person everyone’s looking at.”

Clarendon knows this won’t last forever, but they make the most of it by being deeply present in every moment.

“Age is coming for everybody, even Sue Bird,” Clarendon joked.

They look for the beauty in the moments between the grueling training camp practices. Things like connecting with a trainer during treatment, sharing jokes with teammates, getting hyped when they make a big shot, or talking trash in the middle of an intense scrimmage.

“Things like that make the joy and the fun between the game, really fun,” Clarendon said. “I just try and enjoy the moment.”