One day after losing to the Phoenix Mercury in the first round of the playoff’s Seattle Storm’s Sue Bird has announced that she’s considering hip surgery during the offseason.

According to Bird she has been suffering through a slight tear of the labrum in her left hip with some discomfort to her right hip.

The Associated Press revealed that Bird will have her injury assessed over the coming days to determine if surgery is the best route to take. In November Bird learned of her injury however doctor’s recommended against surgery at that time.

Bird said of the situation:

“When you have opportunities, especially as a women’s basketball player the way our schedules are, to take care of things, you have to do it. She went on to say, “Obviously I’m getting older, you don’t want things to linger. You don’t want it to cause something worse down the road.”

The 31-year-old WNBA star scored 22 points in her teams game 3 loss to Mercury. The Seattle Storm were last year’s WNBA champions.

For her part in the league Sue Bird was a co-recipient this year for the Kim Perrot Sportsmanship award.

Best of luck to Bird as she makes her tough decision during the off-season.

Sue Bird Considering Off-Season Surgery is a post from: The Inquisitr

It is always sad when sports team shut down, not only for the fans of that team, but for fans of the sport as well. It is tough when economics and other outside business decisions shut down or force a team to relocate. Today the Maloof Family who both the Sacramento Kings of the NBA and the Sacramento Monarchs of the WNBA announced that they would no longer operate the Monarchs and now the WNBA offices are scrambling to find a new ownership group and a plan to relocate the franchise.

The loss of the Monarchs hurts for the WNBA, they were a charter member of that league, and the league Champions in 2005. Until yesterday their official team website had a title, “Picture yourself as a 2010 Monarchs season ticket holders.” So this move took many kind of by surprise. It’s not as if the attendance of the Monarchs was terrible. In fact by WNBA standards it was pretty good. In fact of the current WNBA team the Monarchs had the sixth highest average franchise attendance. Of course the team with the fifth highest average franchise attendance, the Detroit Shock, was recently sold and relocated.

The Maloof family, who also own the Palms Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, said they no longer wished to operate the team because it split their focus from the Sacramento Kings. There have been some reports that the Detroit Shock had lost 25 million dollars over their 12 years of existence. Since the WNBA has a pretty small salary cap, just 803k for 2009, that doesn’t seem possible. It is interesting that the Monarchs are not being shut down due to financial loses.

Since the California Bay area is a desirable location for a WNBA franchise the move may not be a big one. In fact there are potential groups in both San Jose and Oakland who may buy the franchise.

More WNBA News and Notes

Sacramento Monarchs shut down is a post from: The Inquisitr

Many sports fans out there will yell and scream that the WNBA is not a sport, and that may well be, however they do have specific market and some of their teams have been very successful both on the court and in the stands. However WNBA teams do not far well when they are in larger markets where other sports franchises have the monopoly on fans attention and pocketbooks.

The Detroit Shock have been one of the more successful WNBA teams, since their inception in 1998 they have won three WNBA titles, however they have never been able to draw a large fan base, nor have they been able to negotiate a TV deal for the local Detroit area. With all that in mind reports are beginning to leak that the Shock have been sold and will be relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Beyond their failure to draw fans, this might be a symptom of something else entirely. Detroit Piston and Shock Owner Bill Davidson recently died and this may simply be a selling off an asset. Davidson also owned the Tampa Bay Lightning of the NHL and recently sold that team off as well. Of course Detroit is a city that features Pro teams in all four major American Sports and the Shock have never been able to attract a large amount of fans to their games.

Detroit is not a great market for fringe sports, that city has seen two different Arena Football team fail, even though the Detroit Drive were sold off as owner Mike Illitch bought the Detroit Tigers of the MLB. The simple fact here is Detroit is not a great market for fringe type sports. Beyond the four pro teams we have to add in the popularity of the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. That is six teams all more popular that the WNBA. So a move to a city with less competition makes much business sense.

Detroit Shock to move to Tulsa, Okla. is a post from: The Inquisitr