SEATTLE — The old point guard with flecks of gray in her hair and her new not-so-young-but-still-in-her-prime protegee are huddled in front of a laptop once again.

These meetings have become the bedrock of a budding relationship that’s formed between Storm coach Noelle Quinn and guard Skylar Diggins-Smith over the past five months.

“I was very intentional with the way I wanted to approach our bond, because I know that Sky really wanted to have a strong relationship with her head coach,” Quinn said. “She referenced that before.”

Admittedly, Quinn, 39, didn’t have much of a relationship with the 33-year-old Diggins-Smith before the latter signed with the Storm on a two-year deal in January. They played against each other 17 times with Diggins-Smith holding the slight edge in wins 9-8.

“I knew who I wanted to play for and I’ve been very adamant about that,” Diggins-Smith said. “I wanted to play for Noelle. I thought her demeanor and her poise fit me. She’s a cool cat and I know I’m a bit more … animated. Her personality works for me with how she approaches the game.”

Personality-wise, the soft-spoken and steely cool Quinn, who is developing a reputation as a tactician in her fourth year as a WNBA coach, and the fiery and temperamental Diggins-Smith couldn’t be more opposite.

However, basketball is their shared love language that they speak fluently, and their video sessions are a time when they become vulnerable and tell the truth about what they’re seeing on the screen.

“I’m more calm and she’s very direct,” Quinn said. “I think it fits well because she always talks about the demeanor of the people in her life that are calm like her mom and her husband. So, it’s balance. Sometimes I get animated when she gets animated, but at the end of the day, it’s all for the same common goal.

“We are very different, but we are actually very alike in our approach and our discipline and how much we want this to work. We take different paths, but we meet at the same place, and it’s very cool to see somebody as elite as her still wants to be great and take the feedback, watch film and sometimes I’m hard on her. I’m really hard on her, but she takes the feedback and she applies it right away. I’m just really happy she trusts our process.”

Said Diggins-Smith: “We watch film after the game on the plane. We watch film together in her office. We watch film at shootaround. Oh, let’s look at these clips. It could be on the defense or offense. We watch film on the court. … I might call her on the phone and say ‘I had an idea about A, B and C.’”

After clashing with former Phoenix Mercury coach Vanessa Nygaard and sitting out the 2023 season on maternity leave, Diggins-Smith, who is one of only three players in WNBA history to play after giving birth to a second child, made it a priority to land with a team that would support her on and off the court during the 12th year of her career.

“This is home for me,” said Diggins-Smith, the former Notre Dame standout taken No. 3 overall in the 2013 WNBA draft by the Tulsa Shock, who became the Dallas Wings. “That’s how I feel. That’s what the ownership group tells me. That’s what I feel from the city and from the fans, from the coaching staff and the organization.”

During her first year with the Storm, the 5-foot-9, 145-pound playmaker is averaging 14.5 points while ranking fourth in the league with 6.5 assists per game and 10th in steals (1.5).

Diggins-Smith has been the Storm’s best player since returning from the Paris Olympic break, averaging 18 points, 6.5 assists, 1.5 steals and one block while shooting 44.1% from the field.

“Even though I was gone, I still kept in contact with her and how hard she was working,” said Quinn, an assistant with the Canadian Olympic team. “I knew the second half of the season for her was going to be something special and something that she probably wanted at the beginning.

“During the Olympic break, she worked a ton. I kept an eye on her shooting numbers. She must have taken like 10,000 shots. It was crazy. This is what separates the greats, it’s the mindset and the discipline.”

In her last outing, Diggins-Smith broke Sue Bird’s team record for most assists in a season and paid homage to the former Storm star who tallied 221 assists in 2003 and 2018.

“I definitely feel the presence of what she’s built,” said Diggins-Smith who has 227 assists in 35 games. “She’s a pillar of our league and still very much involved as an ambassador, as a supporter, and same with our organization as an owner. Her presence is important. It’s felt here. Her legacy is nothing that anybody can erase even if they tried. It’s evergreen here, literally.

“I’m honored to be mentioned in the same sentence as her when it came to that. I understand she wasn’t allowed to play as many games as I was allowed to play as well, too. My hope is that mine gets broken by somebody else, and eventually we’re playing 50, 60, 70, and 80 games in here. That’s my hope for the future.”

It’s no easy thing to follow Bird’s footsteps, but as Diggins-Smith noted with a smile: “They had a year to transition. So, it wasn’t like I came in the very next season after Sue.”

To be sure, the Storm rotated three players (Sami Whitcomb, Ivana Dojkic and Yvonne Turner) at point guard during a forgettable 2023 season in which they ranked last in assists (17.7 per game) and finished next to last in the standings at 11-29.

Heading into Wednesday’s 9 p.m. ET road game against the Los Angeles Sparks (7-28), the Storm (21-14) are fifth in the league in assists (20.4).

Alongside newcomer Nneka Ogwumike, Diggins-Smith is one of the biggest reasons for the Storm’s revival.

“Anybody coming to Seattle and knowing that you’re following a legend like Sue, that’s hard,” said Quinn who played five years with Bird while winning a championship as teammates in 2018 and in 2020 as an associate head coach. “Sky is not Sue, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s actually a great thing for this organization to have another point guard of that caliber who is so hungry to continue the legacy.

“If you look at the back of her baseball card so to speak, she’s done so much. The one thing she hasn’t done is win a championship, but she’s done so much. She’s been on the All-Defensive team, she’s been All-WNBA, multiple All-Star, been an Olympic gold medalist and just broke an assists record.

“She’s a legend within her own right. For her to take this torch and run with it, for me it’s special. I can’t really put it into words. It’s a different era. It’s a different type of basketball. It’s a different feel. She’s a mom and all of these things that she encompasses. It’s different, but it’s great for us.”

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