The 2015 season was an unusual one for Sue Bird. She found herself in an unfamiliar place, being out of the postseason and on a team building for the future, but that does not mean that it was uneventful.

It turned into one of milestones and mentorship and she continued to add to her resume and cement herself as the best point guard in league history.

“This has been a unique season,” Bird said. “We wiped the slate clean in a lot of ways, almost starting over with the roster.

“It was definitely unique for me but it was also very rewarding. We didn’t have a lot of expectations coming in and we all just found a way to figure it out, chemistry-wise, learning a new system is never easy and that it takes time.”

Bird was one only only four returners to the Storm and was one of only five players with at least four years of experience, with no one coming close to her 13 years.

Bird had always been a leader while in a Storm uniform and now she had a new role: mentor. By the end of the season, her fellow guards had a combined 11 years of experience and none more than five.

She also took up the task of mentoring the future of the franchise and a fellow No. 1 overall pick, Jewell Loyd.

“In some ways, I’ve been an extension of the coaches as well at times,” Bird said. “Giving tidbits, little bits here and there. How I’ve always been as a person and always been as a leader on teams, I try to lead by example.

“I hope that they were able to see the body of work of a professional athlete.”

That maturation of not just the younger players but the team as a whole began take take shape as the season wore on and it was evident to Bird.

“By the end, I thought we were playing really well and we had a good brand of basketball,” she said. “One of the things Jenny [Boucek] really was focused on was building the foundation of what this franchise is going to look like on the court for the next seven, eight years. I think we got off to a good start in that way.”

“It’s funny. In a lot of ways if our schedule had been flip flopped and we were home a lot in the beginning, we actually would have gotten better quicker.”

All the while, she continued to be one of the more productive point guards in the league and was one of only two players that averaged 10 points and five assists per game, along with Minnesota’s Courtney Vandersloot.

Bird even came one assist shy of tying her career mark for most in a single game when she dropped 13 dimes against San Antonio on Aug. 8 and had five games where she recorded eight or more.

Right after the All-Star Break, the Storm embarked on a six-game road trip and one of the stops was to Bird’s home state of New York where the team took on the Liberty at Madison Square Garden.

Bird entered the Garden only six points short of 5,000 for her career and with 5:13 left in the third hit a three to move her past that plateau and make her the first player in WNBA history to score 5,000 points and dish out 2,000 assists.

The 14-year veteran kept up the pace and finished the season by passing two more names on the all-time scoring list (Taj McWilliams-Franklin, Tangela Smith) to round out the season in 11th place with 5,087. Bird has a long way to go to reach the top 10 with Katie Douglas next at 5,563.

With no signs of slowing down, Bird will continue to climb the charts and hope to see the Storm take larger strides in 2016.