Sue Bird Only Needed Three Quarters To Set The WNBA Finals Assist Record In Game 1 Against The Aces

It’s been a strange year for sports, to say the least, and one of the biggest challenges to the return has been scheduling. So, just as the NBA Finals are set to tip off Game 2 between the Lakers and Heat, the WNBA Finals are also underway in Game 1 on Friday night in Florida.

The top two teams in the WNBA during their abbreviated season in the Wubble, the Seattle Storm and the Las Vegas Aces, kicked off their five-game series. It features a host of superstars, one of whom is in the process of winding down her career but is still out to prove she still has plenty left in the tank in pursuit of a title. We’re talking, of course, about Sue Bird, the future Hall of Fame inductee. Bird put her full powers on display on Friday against the Aces, making history by dishing out a Finals single-game assist record. The record fell when she picked up her 12th dime before the fourth quarter even started.

This was not the only record set by Bird for her aptitude as a distributor — she set the Finals record for assists in a half, too.

And when it was all said and done, Bird, who turns 40 a little later this month, finished things up with 16 assists, her career-high for any game and one fewer than the Aces had as a team.

Bird didn’t do a whole lot of scoring on the evening — those duties went to Breanna Stewart (37 points) and Jewell Loyd (28 points) — but the Storm still came out on top. Seattle picked up a 93-80 win to go up in the best-of-5 series, 1-0, over Las Vegas.