12. Sue Bird: “You Have to Pay the Superstars.”

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0:59Some people collect comic books or sports paraphernalia or old vinyl records. Well, my guest today, Sue Bird, she collects championships. She has four WNBA championships, five EuroLeague basketball championships, two NCAA championships, four International Basketball Federation World Cups, and four Olympic gold medals. And at the age of 40, she's still going strong, leading the Seattle Storm to the WNBA title this fall. and looking to collect her fifth Olympic gold, if and when the Tokyo Olympics take place. Sue Bird is busy off the court as well. She recently helped negotiate a landmark collective bargaining agreement for the WNBA players, and she and soccer star Megan Rapinoe got engaged last October.

1:44Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt. So this will be my first time interviewing an athlete, and I really wonder how it will go. I think this podcast works best when my guests are highly reflective and willing and able to self-analyze. And in my limited personal experience with professional athletes, those are not very common traits. So I've never met Sue Bird. People who know her say she's smart, thoughtful, generous, and open. Well, I guess I'm about to find out.

2:27Sue, you turned out to be one of the greatest basketball players of all time. But I'm curious, when did you realize how good you would be? Did you already know that in high school? Yeah, I think I started to understand in high school how things could turn out, even as early as middle school, to be honest. College should start recruiting you then, sending you letters, and that's when your eyes kind of get a little bit wider. Never would I have imagined sitting here now with all the accolades and championships, but you definitely start to get a glimpse. One of the most overwhelming biases we see in psychology is towards overconfidence.

3:01And so if you ask high school basketball players what their chances are of playing in the NBA, they have some outlandishly high number relative to what's real. But I kind of get the sense that you knew you were good, but you, unlike probably so many other recruits, didn't seem as overwhelmed with overconfidence as most people are. I would agree. Do you think that's been helpful to you or hindered you in your career and life? Probably both. It definitely stems from my dad. My dad is just known for his brutal honesty. And from a very young age, I was very realistic. Like if I played a game, I could go home at night and be like, I did not play well.

3:42And if I played well, I could go home at night and be like, wow, I played really well. And to your point, I think it helped me because I think I was always trying to prove something. I was always trying to prove I belong. I mean, honestly, even to this day, I still feel like I have to prove something. Now, could I make the argument that if I was a little bit more confident, maybe even overconfident, could I have done more? Yeah, you could probably make that argument. Some of that delusion would have been nice, but I can't complain. There's been some interesting research that suggests that where overconfidence can actually be helpful is in the domain of believing that you're a really good learner.

4:21And that's a really important distinction. So like if you're a parent, it turns out you don't want to tell your kids they're great at a sport. Instead, you want to tell them, hey, maybe you're not that good yet, but you're the kind of kid who, if you try hard, will turn out to be great. But let me ask you about your practice. It's said that Gretzky and that Michael Jordan and LeBron James are all incredibly hard practices. Does that describe you as well? I would say I am a smart practicer. What does that mean? If you're going to play a sport at an elite level, everybody's going hard. Like everybody got there for a reason.

4:56They all work really hard. Yes, some maybe more than others, but then, hey, some are more talented than others. So for the most part, it all kind of evens out in its own way. But for me, I'm basically just not wasting energy in places where it doesn't need to be wasted. What does that mean specifically? Let's rewind. If I'm early in my career, you have to take the time to get on the court and perfect the things that you're good at. for me, I'm a 5 '9 point guard. I'm not physically dominating anybody, but I saw the skills that I had that I knew I needed to be great at, and I mastered them. For me, it was being as consistent as humanly possible with my shooting.

5:34So now, what I'm about to say is very much about my age. You know, I've had, I can't even tell you, six, I think, knee surgeries on one of my knees. so I have to be very careful and mindful of what I'm doing with my knee. In terms of my off-season training, I'm only on the basketball court two times a week, if that. I get my conditioning in the pool. I get it on a spin bike. I also just watch games. I tune into men's games. I tune into women's games. I see how players play, and I steal. Hell yeah, I'm stealing all the moves. There's a move right now, actually, that Isaiah Thomas has that I think I could fit in my game.

6:10I find other ways to get my body ready for basketball without having the actual pounding of being on a court. So if you can be smart about it, you're going to have a longer career. I wasn't planning on talking about my own incredibly shabby basketball career, but I was a point guard too. And my biggest problem was the court was complete chaos. And there were too many people moving too quickly in every direction. I never knew what was going on. I'm guessing for you, that's not a problem. that everything is very orderly for you on the court. It is. I just always had a really good feel for the court, a really good feel of, you know, when to make the pass for just understanding where my teammates need to be in regards to spacing for them, for me.

6:54It actually has slowed down as I've gotten older. And it's just experience. I've seen everything there is to see. I can predict. I can kind of wait and, you know, seek things out that I think might happen. And shooting, do you need to practice to be a good shooter? I think at this point, any basketball player who's gotten this far, your shooting is your shooting. But it's not necessarily about good or bad. It's about being in rhythm. So you're just trying to have that good feeling about what you're doing. I've always been surprised that I think basketball is all done by feel, shooting, that you just look at the rim and you know how far away it is and how hard to shoot.

7:34Whereas it strikes me that it is really just a physics problem in the end. And if you had a way of maybe quantifying it, it could be helpful, but that's crazy, right? I don't know. I mean, the times where I'm like messing around with my nieces and we're in a random park or in their driveway and there's no lines, I definitely feel like a little more lost than I should. Because when there's lines on the court, you know exactly where you are. You know how much effort is needed, how much you need to bend your legs, whatever it is. But when there's no lines, eventually you get it. Don't get me wrong.

8:08It's not like you're throwing up air balls left and right, but it is a little weird at first. In essence, your brain has solved this physics problem in an implicit way because you are using subtly or subconsciously your surroundings that actually define that. That's interesting. Does that make shooting easier on your home court? Because you have more of these cues that are not just the lines, but other things about the way in which the stadium is built? I 100 % think that's true. I'm very aware of my surroundings. I will also say that the fans give you the home court advantage, but even without that, it's very true.

8:45There's a comfort. You've been in this building so many times and you just know it. So by people cheering for you, that makes you what? But something about the emotion that the fans inject into the game. And, you know, this summer, we all had to play in a bubble. No fans, nothing. And it took the emotion out of the game. It just wasn't the same. Those emotions, that roller coaster, the swings, it just didn't exist. I should say I missed it. Because it wasn't there and it was something I noticed. And I think in both the NBA bubble and the WNBA bubble, the shooting percentages were higher. And I don't think it was like 10 % higher or anything crazy.

9:26but enough. Because honestly, just 1 % can make a huge difference. That's maybe one, two shots a game. Do the fans make it harder? I think it goes both ways. So on the road, it's probably like 70-30, it's harder. They're making it harder. At home, it's probably 90-10, they're making it easier. But that 10 % is when you're home and you're a good shooter, and anyone who has watched, you know, J.J. Redick, one of the best shooters of all time, catches the ball in rhythm, the whole crowd is going to go, like that anticipation of him hitting a three. And as a player, you feel it. You can hear it. You can sense it.

10:03And I think it can impact players. So when you shoot in practice from the three-point line, nobody guarding you, what percentage of the time do you think you make the shot? So if I'm shooting 10 shots from five different spots behind the three-point line, I'm trying to make seven out of 10 from every spot. But in the game, if you made four out of 10, that's a great night. You just shot 40%. And the difference is that people are guarding you, obviously. Right. Is there another difference besides that? Probably what we're talking about. Just like the environment. Are we in the playoffs? Is it a big shot?

10:39Is it the first quarter? Is it the fourth quarter? How are they guarding you? There's so much happening. Wait, are you really telling me that pressure gets to you? It's not like you're saying pressure gets to you in a weird way, which I really am surprised to hear you say. I think pressure affects everybody. It just affects some people differently. But I would think that in order to be the player you are, you would have to be a person who actually gets better under pressure rather than worse. Well, so now we're getting into this world of the clutch gene. And some people are more clutch than others statistically, but not enough where you would base any kind of personnel decision.

11:14You wouldn't take a guy on your team or a woman on your team just for that reason. But obviously, there are people who are known for hitting big shots or known for playing well in big games. That exists for sure. But there are people that don't do well, that kind of give into it and it affects them too much. So I had a student who wrote a paper about free throw shooting. And believe it or not, it turns out that at the end of a game, if the game is on the line, that the NBA shooters do worse from the free throw line than they do at other parts of the game. It seems on average, the pressure adversely affects them, but that was totally absent in the WNBA, which was so interesting to me.

11:58It's really, I think, the opposite of public perception about men and women, that women seem to have ice water in their veins and the men in the NBA really, really didn't. That's really interesting. The only other thing I was going to add is I think we frame it the wrong way. It's not that you're going to make nine out of 10. It's that you might make three out of 10, but somebody else is making zero. It's not who's most successful. It's like who's the most successful of the least successful. So you're really saying there are people who cannot maintain the level when the pressure gets really high.

12:34Yes. And then there are people who maintain it, but it's not like there's a whole lot of folks who get better when the pressure's on. And that's exactly what this academic paper showed, that it wasn't that there were a set of people who were clutch in the sense they were even better at the end. It was this difference between maintaining versus losing. Getting worse. Exactly. Exactly. So let's talk more about free throws because it's really interesting to me. So you're a great free throw shooter. Your lifetime free throw percentage is over 85%, which if you look at every player who's ever played in the NBA, that would put you in the top 2 % of all the NBA shooters.

13:11But in general, the WNBA has a higher free throw percentage made than the NBA. Do you have an explanation for why that is? I don't. The only difference is the size of the ball. Everything else is the same. Rim, same height. Distance is the same. And the ball is one inch smaller, right? The circumference is one inch smaller. Yeah. The irony of that is it's harder to shoot with a woman's ball. It actually is. It's like the smaller the ball goes, it's harder to shoot with a tennis ball. It's just harder. Men's balls are obviously they're a little bigger and they have a little more weight to them.

13:46It's actually an easier ball to shoot. Interesting. Have you ever done any experimentation with that? Do you shoot a men's ball with any regularity? Yeah. So we used to have to play with that size ball for the Olympics. So my first Olympics was played with a guy's ball. So there was like a period of time there where I was training with it pretty regularly and it takes a minute. But once you get adjusted, I didn't even notice it. And I don't know if I shot better or worse, but I felt fine, which I know whenever this is classic, when you go play pickup and God forbid, a guy's player has to play with a woman's ball.

14:16They throw a fit. They can't handle it. They don't want to do it. Oh, I missed that shot. Oh, it's the ball. It's the ball. So there you go. So it is interesting that the men's game and the women's game is the rules are essentially the same except for the size of the ball and the three-point line at the pro level. Has there ever been any discussion of lowering the rim in women's basketball? It doesn't seem like a crazy idea to me. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a crazy idea, and I'll tell you why. First of all, here's the issue. How would a woman, a girl, find anywhere to play? You would never be able to fly in places to play if the rim was at nine feet Every park the rim is 10 feet and i'm telling you now nobody's making a court just for a little girl Like it's that's not the world we live in sadly So logistically, it would just be really difficult to pull it off and I get the arguments But then simultaneously I don't so if the argument is that we would be dunking If you lower it one foot, it doesn't mean everybody all of a sudden is dunking.

15:21It just doesn't So what are we talking about here? Is it just entertainment value? Because I think our game is fine the way it is. And my second argument is always, well, why don't the men raise their rim? Maybe that's the problem. Yeah. I don't know. My own impression is that the rim is just too damn high for regular people. And it was kind of arbitrary. I don't know how it got to be 10 feet. You know, that might've just been the height of the ledge that Naismith had in his gym at the YMCA a million years ago. But I mean, we're already shooting better from the free throw line than the men. So why do we have to lower it?

15:53Yeah, no, it's true. I think another good example is in golf, the hole is just too small. So again, it was some accident of history that the hole was really small. And when you make the hole twice as big, the game is much faster. People are much happier, but it's very difficult to make that change. So you would rather watch Tiger Woods play with a bigger hole? Isn't that what makes professional sports what it is, that they're doing it at the level of difficulty they're doing it? So that's a great question about Tiger Woods. I'm not sure if I'd enjoy it more or less if I watched him play with a bigger hole.

16:31But one thing I know for sure is that when I play golf, it would be much more fun if the hole were bigger. And the same with basketball. We used to play on this eight-foot hoop that was at the local elementary school. It was so much more fun because I could pretend I was really good, even though I really wasn't very good at all. So maybe I should take back what I said. It's not that the WNBA should be playing on nine-foot rims. It's that all the parks should have eight-foot rims because then all the people like me who play in parks could fantasize about how great we are at playing basketball, even though we're not so good.

17:05That makes sense. That makes sense.

17:11You're listening to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt and his conversation with four-time WNBA champion and Olympic gold medalist Sue Bird. They'll return after this short break.

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19:31So something crazy is going on at the University of Connecticut. Starting in the year 2000, the UConn women's team under coach Gino Auriemma won 10 national championships over the next 17 years. No men's team over that same time period won more than three championships. So what in the world explains this complete dominance that UConn has? And why can't other programs capture that? So some of it is as simple as they were more talented. They had a lot of the talent. And that is a huge part of the story. But how do they get the talent? Well, that's the recruiting aspect of it. So you would say the first piece is just, Coach Ori, I mean, it's just like a better recruiter than anybody else on the planet.

20:17He recruited you. What did he do that was so special? So sometimes you go to these schools on these trips and it's like they're whining and dining you. Oh, hey, here's our arena. And you walk in and all of a sudden the lights go out. There's a spotlight on you. They hand you a jersey. They're like, this could be you. you know, starting guard for the, you know, X, Y, and Z team. Teams do this. This is like a thing. And Coach Ariema, there were no bells and whistles. He's kind of just like, what's up? This is who I am. This is who we are. We think you'd fit. Hope you like it here. And that's how he was with me.

20:50It wasn't like take it or leave it, but it was just very matter of fact. And I was drawn in by that. Like, I love that. And why do you think there isn't the equivalent of that in the men's game. I mean, there was in UCLA with John Wooden decades ago, but there really hasn't been dominance in the same way. Yeah, they leave early to go to the NBA. So we were fortunate enough to play there for four years. There's chemistry, there's cohesiveness. Yeah, that's interesting. I did the tally on your college career, excluding your freshman year, when you were hurt. You won 107 games and you lost four. Was that boring?

21:26No. The minute you step on that campus, you're just drinking the Yukon Kool-Aid. Now I look at it and I'm like, oh my God, how do they not get bored? They're winning by 30. But when you're there, you don't feel that way because you're just expected to play at a certain level. And in order to play at that level, you can't have a day off. So how about the Olympics? You have four Olympic gold medals. My guess is that the average margin of victory in your games in the Olympics has been roughly 40 points. Probably, yeah. Is that boring? So that's different because it's not a season. It's a two-week tournament.

21:59The Olympics happens midway through our WNBA season. So we literally get together like a week before, maybe two weeks, and that's it. We might have some training camps throughout the year, but that's it. And all these other teams are practicing for months and months, and we're just winging it. So even though we're more talented, we're not quite a team. So in those two weeks, yes, we're beating teams by 40, but But those games are all like stepping stones and practices for us to hopefully be peaking at the end. Because when you get to the medal rounds, those games are no joke. You can lose those games easy.

22:34So we're so on it and so focused in the early parts of the Olympics that it's never boring because the score doesn't really matter to us. We're not playing for the score. We're playing so we're peaking at the right time. Do you still like playing basketball or did it become a job at some point? I definitely still like it. thank God, or else I'd be in trouble. I'd be miserable. But how I look at it is changing. The joy is still there, but it's taking on a new form. I don't get excited for my own play as much as I get excited for our team's play. I almost look at it like a coach. Would you play for free?

23:11I mean, you could argue I did for like 20 years. I'm not even being... I played overseas, and that's where we make our money. The WNBA, so we have a new CBA, which is a collective bargaining agreement, but I was in a position where I was on a max contract virtually my entire career. And the way the financials worked, if cost of living goes up 5%, my WNBA contract was maxed out. So only went up 1%. So after 15 plus years of that, technically you lose money. So your nominal wage was going up 1 % a year, but because of inflation, your real wage was steadily being eroded over time until your standard of living had been materially reduced.