Basketball great Sue Bird may be retired from the game, but hoops remain a constant in the 45-year-old’s life. In 2025, Sue was named managing director of the USA women’s basketball team—meaning she’s responsible for picking the roster for the upcoming 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles—and just last month, she joined NBC Sports as a WNBA studio analyst.
It’s a busy second act for the former baller—one she tells Women’s Health all about in our summer issue and on the latest episode of The Huddle, the podcast where we talk sports, sweat, and everything in between.
“I did different things to try to see what would speak to me,” Sue says of trial-running various pursuits, including broadcasting, during her off-seasons from the Seattle Storm. “The reality was, I was just so passionate about women's sports—women's basketball, especially—so, once I retired, it kind of just showed itself, you know?”
Despite a clear path forward, Sue wasn’t immune to growing pains along the way. Here’s how she’s managed her transition from the court to the desk.
Learning New Skills
When it came to approaching her new roles—which also include co-founding the female athlete platform TOGETHXR and hosting her own podcast, Bird’s Eye View—Sue channeled the leadership skills she honed as a point guard in the WNBA.
“A lot of how I prepare for my different jobs is the same way I did as an athlete, which is trying to do as much as I can to be prepared, understand you can't prepare for everything and you got to be ready for anything that happens,” she says. “The other part is understanding not everything's going to work, and you can't let that get you down.”
One thing Sue wasn’t entirely prepared for? Google Docs.
“All the laptop work has been an adjustment,” she says. “I'm still not doing spreadsheets. I don't know how to edit in [Google Docs] very well, and I don’t know the shortcuts. I just put a lot of comments.”
Honestly, who has all the shortcuts memorized anyway!?
Training for Life
Along with the mental transition has come a physical one, too. Sue acknowledges that her workout regimen looks a bit different today than how it did when she was running up and down the court, night after night.
“You're just never going to be able to stay in that type of shape,” she says. “It's going to change dramatically, so that was one part, in terms of my identity, that I had to let go of.”
Sue says she’s worked hard to shift out of an all-or-nothing mentality, where if she didn’t train her absolute hardest on a given day, it wasn’t worth it. Now, she’s embraced a marginal gains mindset, and her routine reflects that. Sue exercises six days a week, blending group fitness classes (which she loves for accountability), heavy lifting (to build muscle mass as she heads into perimenopause), and Pilates (for recovery).
“Because of all the injuries…my body just feels so much better when I move it,” Sue says.
Advising the Next Generation
As a living legend of her sport and the managing director of USA women’s basketball, Sue is in a prime position to mentor the women coming up in the league. But, as she explains it, today’s players have many more opportunities than she ever did—and she’s excited to see that progress.
“They have a totally different life and experience within basketball than I did,” Sue says. “We're now seeing the million dollar contracts get signed. They've got endorsement deals up the wazoo, which is amazing. They're going to be in a position to have generational wealth, to continue to grow that, to pass that on, to do things when they're done playing that were probably just different opportunities than what I had.”
But, if a player does need some words of wisdom from Sue, she’s more than happy to oblige. “I leave an open door, and when players come to me and want to talk about anything—my experiences and whatnot—of course I help them,” she says. “But for the most part, they're doing all right.”
And we love to see it! To hear more from Sue, including her plans for the 2028 Olympics—click play on the latest episode of The Huddle above.
Amy Wilkinson is a contributing entertainment editor at Women's Health, where she edits the magazine's celebrity cover stories and writes health features. She has previously held editor titles at Entertainment Weekly and MTV News. In 2021, Amy completed her 600-hour teacher-training at Core Pilates NYC to become a comprehensively trained Pilates instructor.
