‘Sue Bird: In the Clutch’ Review: Adulatory Portrait of a WNBA Legend Takes the Softball Approach
There comes a moment in many sports documentaries when viewers find themselves wondering whether they’ve drunk the Gatorade. All the fast cuts and swelling music, the bodily injuries and emotional agony, the triumphant moments and podium tears have a way of pushing our buttons.
In director Sarah Dowland’s “Sue Bird: In the Clutch,” that objectivity-questioning pause comes when the WNBA legend’s agent appears for an on-camera interview (she happens to be one of its executive producers as well). No arguing that agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas knows a great deal about Bird and even more about the changes in marketing strategies that women athletes have faced over the years. She also knows that optics matter, and it’s hard not to be a little frustrated that such an obviously biased cheerleader should appear as a source. (Another red flag: NBA Entertainment had a role in producing the doc.)
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Fortunately, interviews with point guard Stephen Curry, parents Nancy and Herschel Bird, and UConn Coach Geno Auriemma add to our sense of Bird in ways that feel less packaged. These are perhaps obvious caveats for a film that manages to be at times insightful and more often a blast. Bird’s highlights capture one of the greats — with five Olympic gold medals and four WNBA championships, a couple of NCAA titles and more — playing one of the most exciting and cerebral positions in game.
From her teen years in Long Island to her 21-year run as a member of the Seattle Storm and her role on five winning Olympic teams, Bird often kept cool, kept her teammates focused and landed the type of plays the movie’s title celebrates. Sometimes those were three-pointers from behind the arc; other times, stunning passes to set up teammates. “Sue Dishes. Lauren Swishes” boasts a sign held high, referring to the Storm’s one-time star Lauren Jackson. The two players were pivotal in the team’s first two WNBA championships.
Ostensibly, the film follows Bird during the final year of her professional career. “One more year! One more year!” fans at Climate Pledge Arena chant at the end of the 2021 season. They get their wish. Woven into the bookends of that season-ending playoff game and her final game in 2022 are numerous interviews with No. 10, as well as accounts of Bird’s childhood in Long Island, of playing for Auriemma’s UConn Huskies, of being drafted by Storm and playing in Russia during the WNBA’s offseason with Diana Taurasi (let’s see that doc!). There’s also some sweet dishing on how Bird met soccer star Megan Rapinoe during the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.
Although the two have become a power couple, the documentary hews to Bird. During her on-camera interview, Rapinoe recounts encouraging her more introspective fiancée to embrace the farewell tour aspects of her final season, to honor and bask in the ardor of her fans. Both women have utilized their platforms for social justice causes.
Bird was instrumental in the league’s “Say Her Name” campaign, which addressed bias after the police killing of Breonna Taylor. Bird and Rapinoe’s relationship is also treated as a given in ways that were unimaginable during the WNBA’s formation. As women’s basketball analyst and former star Rebecca Lobo says of the WNBA’s earlier years: The league’s checking of its players’ private lives and nascent public personas often reflected the societal tussles with gender, sexuality and equity.
Even when “In the Clutch” has the sheen of a career tribute, its very existence is a sign of the changing business of sports and women’s sports in particular. Last year, Alison Klayman’s compelling if less shiny documentary, “Unfinished Business,” focused on the launch of the WNBA using the history of its flagship team, New York’s Liberty. In the Sue Bird doc, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert says that Bird was a helpful partner when the league and the players’ union were forging an 8-year Collective Bargaining Agreement that started in 2020.
At the movie’s end, fans can be heard chanting again. This time, viewers — not unlike the star of the hour — might momentarily confuse the similar rhythm of “Thank You Sue! Thank You Sue!” as a call for one more year. Bird returned the gratitude. But “Sue Bird: In the Clutch” feels like a sign of things to come, as much a harbinger as a send-off.
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