SPRINGFIELD — Maya Moore and Sue Bird became world-wide basketball stars, the final stamp of that status to come Saturday night with their walks down the red carpet and enshrinement into the Naismith Hall of Fame.
They will join Rebecca Lobo and Swin Cash as former UConn women’s basketball players to reach the summit in Springfield, doubling the Husky presence, but it won’t end there. Diana Taurasi, who retired last year, will join them sooner than later. Still active in the WNBA, Tina Charles, Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier are sure to follow, with several other deserving of consideration as players, coaches, contributors.
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Dom Amore: UConn’s Sue Bird made pathways possible, made things happen along way to Hall of Fame
Also to be inducted in the Class of 2025 are iconic men’s players Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard, Sylvia Fowles joining Bird and Moore from the women’s committee, former collegiate and current NBA coach Billy Donovan, the entire 2008 US men’s Olympic team and Miami Heat owner Micky Arison.
The door to Symphony Hall, elegant site of the annual inductions, was opened in more ways than one by coach Geno Auriemma, inducted himself in 2006. Looking back across his 12 national championships and 1,200-plus victories, he, Chris Dailey and the coaching staffs managed not only to recruit future Hall of Famers, but get them to play together. That second piece separates them all.
“People who are able to be a part of success over long periods of time have to know how to be a good teammate,” Moore said. “You can’t achieve success by yourself. Those winning ways of taking ownership, responsibility to each other, to ourselves, is something we learned a lot at UConn. You have to be able to make it fun.
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“If you know any of the UConn legends, they’re characters, they have personality. You have to keep it loose when you’re working that hard. But that internal responsibility for the welfare of the team is something you learn at UConn, and that translates into the pros.”
It also translated to the Olympics, where Auriemma’s USA Basketball teams featured multiple Hall of Famers on the floor together, and all over the world. Bird and Moore were together, with Stewart, Charles and Taurasi on the 2016 gold medalists at Rio de Janeiro. The undefeated UConn 2001-02 team had Bird, Cash and Taurasi. The 2016 team had both Stewart and Collier, the two best players in the WNBA in recent years. Decades down the road, the 2025 champs, with Paige Bueckers, Sarah Strong and Azzi Fudd, could have multiple Hall enshrinees.
All were top recruits who chose to accept the challenges that come with playing at UConn, one of the few programs where success is defined almost solely by winning national championships.
“It’s hard to put in perspective,” Bird said. “We have the Huskies Hall of Honor, which is their way of acknowledging All-Americas. But we don’t retire numbers, because you’d start to run out. Now, we’re starting to get to the point where they’re retiring those Hall of Fame jersey numbers and in a couple of years you might run out of numbers. That just speaks to the talent that chose to go to Connecticut and then the ways in which the coaching staff helps bring out that greatness. That’s really what it is.”
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If all the UConn players currently in the WNBA played on one team, including Stewart, Collier, Bueckers, Charles and Gabby Williams among them, it could be a title contender. Bird imagined a different kind of UConn Dream Team.
“I saw something where they put an all-time great starting lineup from UConn vs. an all-time great college lineup from any school, and I was like, ‘I think I’m picking UConn.’ It’s like Maya, Diana, myself, Stewie, Rebecca Lobo, a pretty good starting five. As a kid, you choose this school and they really help you become, maybe what you’re meant to be, but you need help, and they help you find that greatness.”
After walking away from basketball, Maya Moore enters Hall of Fame with legacy beyond the game
Auriemma and Cash presented Bird, who played 21 years in the WNBA, winning four championships to go with two at UConn, five Olympic gold medals and more championships overseas. Moore, though she stepped away from basketball at age 29 to pursue her social justice and prison reform objectives and raise her family, she won so many college, pro and Olympic titles within little more than a decade, president Barack Obama once joked there was a “Maya Moore wing in the White House.”
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Her time at UConn came back to her when she walked through Mohegan Sun for the Hall of Fame festivities Friday.
“To actually be in this place, spending so much of my young adulthood, being forged in the UConn ways with my teammates, it’s super special,” Moore said. “Seeing people walking around in UConn jerseys, saying, ‘I remember your teams, and you guys are the best.’ It’s cool to remember the impact we were able to have on people.
“I met a young lady whose name was Maya and she was really excited to see me. … What we do matters, and so much of that happened here at UConn to start that trajectory for me.”
Before the days of social media and the attention it lavishes on today’s elite teenage players, the UConn experience taught women’s basketball players how to perform and comport under pressure, and in a fish bowl. “I loved coming back (to play the Connecticut Sun) in my WNBA days, so many fans at UConn were able to come and watch a person that they really watched grow up,” Bird said. “They really viewed us as daughters. This state is where it all got started.”
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Maya Moore, Sue Bird, those who preceded them and those who will follow them to Springfield had the greatness in them, or else they would not have been pursued by UConn. But some place, and some one, had to unlock it. And the “force” stayed with them.
“I was a little bit of a shy kid, I liked to dip my toe in the water before I try anything new,” Bird said. “Coach Auriemma and the staff saw that, but they also saw where I had strengths. So through the Jedi mind tricks that is Geno Auriemma, they were able to find ways to pull that out of me. But they do it in a way where you have to discover it on your own. They kind of show you the way, but then they make you go the rest of the way and with that is a different confidence.
“When you have to figure it out yourself, that’s a different level. For me and a lot of players, that method really works. … Jedi mind tricks.”
