Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi to meet for last time in WNBA regular season

It's one of the great friendships in sports. But the longest-running rivalry among best friends in WNBA history is nearing its end. The Seattle Storm's Sue Bird, in her 19th and final WNBA season, and the Phoenix Mercury's Diana Taurasi, in her 18th season, meet Friday (10 p.m. ET, NBA TV) in Phoenix for what will be the last time unless their teams face off in the playoffs.

It will be the 46th time they have met in the WNBA regular season, with Bird holding a 25-20 edge. That ties for the most head-to-head regular-season meetings between players in the league. Tamika Catchings and Swin Cash and Lindsay Whalen and Candice Dupree also met 46 times.

Bird and Taurasi have faced off 14 times in the postseason, with Taurasi having an 8-6 edge. The 41-year-old Bird and the Storm have won four WNBA titles, while Taurasi, 40, and the Mercury have won three. Bird, the WNBA's all-time assists leader, has played in a league-record 570 games. Taurasi, the league's all-time scoring leader, will appear in her 500th game Friday. They are the only players in WNBA history to hit the 500 mark.

The guards grew up on opposite coasts: Bird from Long Island, New York, and Taurasi from Southern California. Their first official game together was 22 years ago on the same team: Nov. 12, 2000, in Hartford, Connecticut, as their UConn Huskies beat the Georgia Lady Bulldogs 99-70. Bird was a junior who had helped lead UConn to the program's second NCAA title seven months before. Taurasi was a whiz-kid freshman who early on in college did a full-speed, spin-move layup in transition that left Bird thinking, «There's a new sheriff in town.»

Bird had 11 points and three assists in that first game, with Taurasi coming off the bench to score eight points.