It's a gorgeous summer day in Seattle, with the afternoon sun shining on Sue Bird as she sips organic coffee outside a shop in her Queen Anne neighborhood. She wears a "Femme Forever" T-shirt, jeans and white Chucks. Dressed up or dressed down -- even in her practice togs -- her look is effortless.

Bird might be in the fourth quarter of her basketball career -- at 36, she is the oldest player in the WNBA and is in her 15th season with the Seattle Storm -- but she is expertly managing the clock. She has never been in better shape and isn't talking about retirement anytime soon.

Her accolades are already legendary: two NCAA titles at UConn when the Huskies were establishing their dynasty in the early 2000s; two WNBA championships with the Storm; four Olympic gold medals with Team USA; three world championship golds; and four EuroLeague titles while competing in Russia.

Now an All-Star for a record-tying 10th time, she'll start for the West squad before an adoring KeyArena crowd on Saturday in Seattle. She is a revered teammate, the center of every huddle, a fan favorite from coast to coast; the ponytailed point guard always has looked the part of the girl next door as much as the face of a franchise. Yeah, everybody loves Bird.

But few outside her family and friends truly know her. She has thoroughly and thoughtfully answered countless questions from reporters since she was a teenager, but Bird usually demonstrated a default mode: cautious.

As former teammate Swin Cash says, "Sue and 'controversy' never mixed. She wasn't going to say certain things in the media. ... Now, when you talk about diversity or inclusion or racial inequality or sexism or other hot-button topics, she's going to give it to you how she sees it. I love and respect that about her."

Indeed, now Bird is more fully voicing her heart, her experience, her views, her truth. The Long Island girl has grown into a woman who has traveled the globe and has elevated her consciousness.

"She just has this way of expressing her opinion: She doesn't shut anybody off when she speaks. I could probably work on that a little," says Seattle Reign and U.S. national team soccer player Megan Rapinoe, who has been dating Bird since last fall.

And Bird is OK with this being known. She has been out to her family and friends for many years -- telling them soon after her pro career began in Seattle after she was the WNBA's No. 1 pick in 2002 out of UConn -- but she hadn't publicly confirmed it before.

"I'm gay. Megan's my girlfriend. ... These aren't secrets to people who know me," Bird says. "I don't feel like I've not lived my life. I think people have this assumption that if you're not talking about it, you must be hiding it, like it's this secret. That was never the case for me."

So why talk about it now? "It's happening when it's happening because that's what feels right," Bird says. "So even though I understand there are people who think I should have done it sooner, it wasn't right for me at the time. I have to be true to that. It's my journey."

Bird leans back in a wooden Adirondack chair and settles in to detail the essential parts of her story -- with help from those who know her best.

BIRD REALIZED SHE was gay while she was at UConn, but "nobody ever talked about it when I was in high school or college." She and Phoenix guard Diana Taurasi -- Bird's close friend and former UConn teammate, who in May married recently retired WNBA player Penny Taylor in a wedding that Bird attended -- never discussed the topic until they were playing together in Russia in the mid-2000s.

Once Bird figured it out, she says it was a "nonissue" for her and those closest to her. And if someone had castigated her, "I would have been like, 'Fine, goodbye.' I never was tormented within myself.

"Of course, I have a whole journey -- everybody does in life. I think the hard part is being public about it. I don't like to be, not necessarily 'gossiped' about but the topic of conversations."

Bird knows people might assume that her relationship with Rapinoe, who has long been involved in LGBTQ activism, is what prompted her to speak out now. But that's not the case.

"This actually has nothing to do with Megan, in terms of how free I feel to talk about it," Bird says. "This has been something I've been on the verge of doing for a long time."

“I joke she is my No. 1 go-to-for-advice person. She's just so level-headed.” Megan Rapinoe on girlfriend Sue Bird

Last summer, before she really knew Rapinoe, Bird filled out a questionnaire that was to run in a magazine before the 2016 Rio Games: "25 things you don't know about Olympians."

"I literally had at No. 25: 'I'm gay,' " she says. "And then I just didn't do it. I chickened out."

She later overheard a reporter talking to one of her Olympic teammates, Elena Delle Donne, about having recently come out. The casualness of their conversation struck Bird because it sounded so ordinary, in a comforting way.

"I almost said, 'Yeah, it's no big deal. I'm gay, who cares?'" Bird says. "There's another moment it was right there, but I didn't say anything."

Yet she knew she would eventually. And Bird is pleased that the WNBA has in recent years embraced LGBTQ pride as an initiative and reached out to LGBTQ fans -- something the league didn't do in Bird's early years as a pro.

"The players have influenced that a ton, especially the younger ones," Bird says. "Where the league is now is appropriate, I think, in terms of support."

But the WNBA, Bird says, faces many other challenges.

"Homophobia hurts our league; racism hurts it; sexism hurts it," she says. "For [the NBA], it was a big racial issue. For us, it's racial and gender."

Rapinoe is five years younger than Bird, and despite playing professional soccer in Seattle since about 2012, she had met Bird only briefly before last year. With the U.S. women's soccer team's earlier-than-expected exit at the 2016 Olympics, Rapinoe had time to see other events, including women's basketball. At some point, she and Bird began a conversation -- about pretty much everything -- that is still going on.

"We have a lot in common and just sort of clicked," Rapinoe says. "I joke she is my No. 1 go-to-for-advice person. She's just so level-headed."

“I was living my life, just not necessarily leading the charge. But I never felt that made me any less real.” Sue Bird

Rapinoe drew attention last year for kneeling during the national anthem in support of then-49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's protest of racial inequality. And Rapinoe has been very vocal in her belief that being out is important because it can help young people with their self-esteem.

"Megan feels really passionately about things," Bird says. "I just never felt that calling, if that's the right word. I was living my life, just not necessarily leading the charge. But I never felt that made me any less real."

Rapinoe says, "Sue has the same convictions about her life and the things she believes in as I do but, I think, does it in a different way.

"It's important to create space for athletes -- and people in general who are in the spotlight and don't want all the attention on them -- to be who they are in a way that's comfortable for them."

But give Bird time. How she describes herself in social settings might hint at how she eventually expands her comfort zone.

"I can be quiet and a little shy," she says. "I'm usually just dipping my toe in the water until the extrovert part of me can come out."