Seattle Storm

The Seattle Storm have won four WNBA championships—2004, 2010, 2018, and 2020—tied with the Minnesota Lynx for the most in league history, and every single one of them featured Sue Bird. That is not a coincidence. Bird, who retired in 2022 as the most decorated player in WNBA history, was the connective tissue across two decades of Storm basketball, the point guard who linked Lauren Jackson's dominance in the early titles to Breanna Stewart's brilliance in the later ones. Jackson, the Australian superstar, anchored the 2004 and 2010 championship teams. Stewart arrived and immediately elevated the franchise to another level, winning back-to-back Finals MVPs in 2018 and 2020. At Climate Pledge Arena, the Storm built something that felt permanent—a franchise culture sustained by passionate Pacific Northwest fans who treated women's basketball not as a curiosity but as essential.

Then the pillars began to fall. Bird retired after 2022. Stewart left for the New York Liberty in 2023. And before the 2025 season, Jewell Loyd—the last star standing from the championship core—requested a trade and was dealt to the Las Vegas Aces. In the span of three years, the Storm went from a franchise defined by continuity and homegrown talent to one that had to start over from scratch.

The 2025 rebuild brought new faces: Nneka Ogwumike returned and earned her tenth All-Star selection, joined by Skylar Diggins, Gabby Williams, and Ezi Magbegor. Seattle finished 23-21, good enough for the seventh seed, and lost to the Aces in the first round. It was a modest result for a franchise accustomed to hanging banners, but there was something familiar in the way the Storm approached the transition—with organizational patience, smart roster-building, and the belief that the next championship window is a matter of when, not if.