Loss couldn’t spoil Sue Bird’s final Seattle Storm regular-season home game |Opinion

SEATTLE — They lined up hours earlier than the sport, snaking round Local weather Pledge Enviornment, most of them in No. 10 jerseys and shirts, decided to get inside early to take in each second they might with not simply one of the best level guard of all time within the girls’s recreation, but in addition essentially the most influential girls’s participant of her period.

It was Sue Chook Sunday through the Seattle Storm’s 89-81 loss to the Las Vegas Aces, an up-tempo, high-level contest (Chook completed with 9 factors, six assists and 4 rebounds) that doubled because the four-time WNBA champion’s remaining regular-season residence recreation. Granted, it wasn’t the sendoff she hoped for, which Olympic teammate A’ja Wilson (29 factors, six rebounds) felt considerably unhealthy about.

“I wasn’t making an attempt to crash Sue’s celebration, she invited me!” Wilson mentioned, laughing. “I used to be simply making an attempt to have some enjoyable. I’m simply so joyful for Sue. The issues Sue has carried out inside this franchise, we’ve all gotta give her respect.”

The Storm are already a lock for the playoffs and more likely to play extra residence video games — and given Chook’s excellence over her 21-year profession, and the truth that the Aces spoiled her celebration, most likely none of us ought to rule out a possible fifth WNBA ring earlier than she heads to retirement this offseason. However to be secure, to make sure she was correctly appreciated in case her profession ends on the highway, Seattle followers confirmed up en pressure Sunday.

Primarily based on the roar when Chook ran onto the ground and the truth that there was nary an empty seat within the enviornment, many of the metropolis confirmed as much as ship their level guard off in model. To ensure everybody in attendance understood her significance, the Storm handed out black shirts with a golden goat emblazoned on the entrance. Those that appeared carefully noticed the animal was truly comprised of a listing of Chook’s accolades, a nod to the GOAT (best of all time).

However maybe extra importantly, she’s additionally essentially the most influential participant within the historical past of the WNBA and one among, if not essentially the most, influential athletes within the historical past of Seattle sports activities, no matter gender.

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With an help from Storm nice Lauren Jackson, who retired in 2016, and Breanna Stewart, the 2018 MVP who’s a candidate to win once more this season, Chook has constructed Seattle right into a girls’s sports activities mecca. And in a nod to Chook’s legacy, the sports activities world at giant — however Seattle particularly — will proceed to profit from the Sue Chook Impact.

Think about the next:

— The Storm debuted within the 2000 season earlier than drafting Jackson the next 12 months with the highest general decide. In 2002, once more holding the No. 1 decide within the WNBA draft, Seattle chosen Chook. The Storm’s endurance may be attributed partially to a rabid fanbase that constantly confirmed up for Chook. Not solely does Seattle lead the league in common attendance, however on Sunday, the workforce set a franchise document with a sellout of 18,100.

— With out Chook, who helped Seattle fall in love with girls’s sports activities, there’s seemingly no raucous crowds for Washington girls’s basketball, when Kelsey Plum starred for the Huskies and led them to the 2016 Remaining 4.

— With out Chook, whose excellence demanded that ladies’s sports activities be taken severely in a metropolis lengthy outlined by its skilled males’s groups, there’s seemingly no OL Reign, Seattle’s NWSL workforce.

Maybe no younger WNBA participant is extra certified to talk to Chook’s influence than Plum, now in her sixth skilled season with Las Vegas. Plum, who completed with 16 factors and 4 assists Sunday, was a beneficiary of Chook’s affect on the Seattle sports activities market. Chook was one among 1000’s who packed Alaska Airways Enviornment to observe Plum at Washington from 2013-17, the place she finally broke the NCAA scoring document.

“She’s been large in transcending the sport,” Plum informed USA TODAY Sports activities. “She’s a kind of athletes that breaks by means of the intercourse barrier — she has the last word respect from either side. Seattle is wonderful. It embraces sports activities, irrespective of gender … however the love this metropolis has for girls’s basketball, Sue constructed that.”

For her half, Chook had by no means thought of that — till Sunday.

Ever the purpose guard, she first deferred, saying that “you need to give a bit little bit of a nod to the Seattle Reign,” the town’s former ABL workforce. Then she acknowledged her position, too.

“What’s actually coming throughout my thoughts is … you all the time knew what you have been gonna get from me,” Chook mentioned. “To have a participant like that, in the identical metropolis, you’ll be able to connect to that, you’ll be able to join with that, you’ll be able to join with the workforce — and the followers right here have carried out that. They have been related to Lauren, they’re related now to Stewie (Breanna Stewart) and others however I used to be the fixed, and a constant fixed. So it was straightforward to latch on.”

She talked about different standouts together with Plum and fiancé Megan Rapinoe, an OL Reign star, saying these gamers are “doing their very own factor” in persevering with to maintain Seattle sports activities followers engaged in girls’s video games. However she acknowledged that, “I stored it going. And it’s good to know I helped create different alternatives.”

Creating for others is strictly what an excellent level guard is meant to do. And for Chook, there’s no position extra becoming, or extra fulfilling.

This text initially appeared on USA TODAY: Seattle Storm followers present up en pressure to provide Sue Chook a correct send-off