All she and longtime U.S. teammate Diana Taurasi have done on the international stage is win and now stand alone with five gold medals — the first basketball players ever to accomplish that feat — after a 90-75 win over Japan on Sunday at the Tokyo Games.
The U.S. won its seventh consecutive Olympic gold medal, matching the country’s men’s program for the most ever in a row. The men did it from 1936-68.
With Bird orchestrating the flow of games and Taurasi’s scoring, they have been a constant force for the U.S., providing stability for the women’s program since the 2004 Athens Games.