Sue Bird: Caitlin Clark Changing 'Negative' Stereotypes About Women's Basketball

WNBA icon Sue Bird said Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark's three-point shooting is helping change "negative" stereotypes about women's basketball.

"Caitlin in particular, her long-distance threes. I always said this, we finally got the antidote to dunking," Bird said around the 32-minute mark on Good Game with Sarah Spain produced by iHeartPodcasts, as part of the company's new Women's Sports Audio Network.

Bird continued: "All we heard our entire existence was, 'You guys are boring. You don't dunk. Oh, maybe you should lower the rims. It would be more exciting.' And the thing about the long three is, it is what it is. The distance is the distance. It goes in or it doesn't. It's the same for everybody. So in a sense, I think she snapped people out of this trance that was very negative towards women's basketball, and now she's brought this huge group."

Bird's comments are not the first time three-point specialists have been regarded as potential equalizers between men's and women's basketball. New York Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu competed with the Golden State Warriors' Stephen Curry in February, losing by three points, during the first NBA vs. WNBA 3-Point Challenge at NBA All-Star Weekend.

Despite her admiration of Clark, Bird admitted she didn't fully understand the sudden explosion of hype around women's college basketball heading into the 2024 WNBA draft. Bird herself began her career leading UConn to a dominant 114-4 record from 1998 to 2002.

The four-time WNBA champion added, however, that she admires the business acumen of players like Clark and Chicago Sky rookie Angel Reese who are cashing in on the hype. Both players have recently signed significant endorsement deals, including Clark's reportedly record-breaking $28 million contract with Nike and Reese's multiyear NIL deal with Reebok.

"It really was a lot of new eyeballs that the college players brought with them, which I still don't understand how that happened," Bird said. "I always said this, 'Where do you think all the WNBA players came from?' We all came from college. I don't get it.

"But Caitlin and Reese—I mean, listen, you can talk about a lot of college players, but those two in particular. When I see the younger generation, I just see people that, different from when I was coming out of college and even pretty much all of my career, they now see these business opportunities and they jump at them. They're smart. They're strategic. We felt lucky just to have a league, and they're seeking things out in a different way, which I love to see."

Clark, who recently broke Bird's record of 33 games by hitting the milestones of 400 points and 200 assists in just 26 contests, reportedly declined the opportunity to show off her three-point shooting during an All-Star skills contest. The rookie currently ranks fifth in the WNBA with an average of 2.7 three-pointers on 32.7 percent shooting from behind the arc.