{"id":2301939,"date":"2026-02-26T22:04:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2301939"},"modified":"2026-02-26T22:04:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:04:00","slug":"espn-ends-sue-bird-and-diana-taurasis-final-four-alternate-broadcast-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/espn-ends-sue-bird-and-diana-taurasis-final-four-alternate-broadcast-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN ends Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi\u2019s Final Four alternate broadcast | Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After six years of joint broadcasting for the women\u2019s college basketball Final Four, WNBA legends Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi will not be returning to ESPN\u2019s telecast this April.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are reimagining what we call our alternate telecast,\u201d ESPN senior vice president Meg Aronowitz said Tuesday regarding the 2026 Final Four in Phoenix. \u201cIt has been Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi for the last six years, and we are grateful for them and our time with us. But we are going to reimagine and rethink how we bring the viewer that alternate telecast.\u201d<\/p>\n

“The Bird & Taurasi Show” has been a hit since its debut in the 2019 postseason, in large part to the rapport of the longtime friends, and grew in viewership during the post-pandemic, Caitlin Clark-era surge of interest in the women\u2019s college game.<\/p>\n

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Before Bird\u2019s 21-year career with the Seattle Storm<\/a> (2002-22), in which she was a key member of all four of the franchise\u2019s WNBA championship wins (2004, 2010, 2018, 2020), made 13 All-Star appearances and set franchise records<\/a> for points (6,802) and assists (3,235), the Hall of Fame point guard<\/a> dominated the college game with Taurasi by her side.<\/p>\n

The two cemented a dynasty at UConn<\/a> under famed head coach Geno Auriemma, leading the Huskies to a 39-0 undefeated record and the 2002 NCAA national title. It marked the graduating Bird\u2019s second national championship win (2000) and was the first of three consecutive titles for then-sophomore Taurasi (2003, 2004).<\/p>\n

Bird was drafted first overall in the 2002 WNBA draft by the Storm, and Taurasi was drafted first overall two years later by the Phoenix Mercury, where the future Hall of Famer stayed for the duration of her 20-year career (2004-24).<\/p>\n

Bird and Taurasi also competed for Team USA, winning gold together at every Olympic Games over a 16-year span (2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020). Taurasi also won a sixth gold at the 2024 Olympics, setting an Olympic record.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After six years of joint broadcasting for the women\u2019s college basketball Final Four, WNBA legends Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi will not be returning to ESPN\u2019s telecast this April. \u201cWe are reimagining what we call our alternate telecast,\u201d ESPN senior vice president Meg Aronowitz said Tuesday regarding the 2026 Final Four in Phoenix. \u201cIt has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2301940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2301939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/ESPN-ends-Sue-Bird-and-Diana-Taurasis-Final-Four-alternate.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2301939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2301941,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301939\/revisions\/2301941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2301940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2301939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2301939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2301939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}