Diana Taurasi gets ‘raw’ about Olympic benching

For WNBA legend Diana Taurasi, the upcoming Prime Video docuseries “Taurasi” is a catharsis. She can shed light on the ins and outs of her historic career.

One of which will be coming to terms with being benched during the Paris Olympics, per Josh Weinfuss of ESPN.

After Taurasi was selected to join the team, there were accusations that Caitlin Clark was snubbed. However, Taurasi didn’t see it as such.

“To be honest, I never even really thought about it. I always felt like I deserved to be on the team because it was my team for 20 years and I know how to get the job done” Taurasi said.

Overall, Taurasi played 55 minutes in the first five games in Paris. However, she didn’t play in the gold medal game against France.

The U.S. defeated France 67-66 in a tightly contested battle. Ultimately, Taurasi came away with her 6th Olympic gold medal.

However, she kept looking at teammate Sue Bird during the game with a sense of confusion about coach Cheryl Reeve not putting her in the game.

“This was the game she was actually brought here for,” Bird said.

“I’m confused by what happened,” Taurasi said. “I never got, ‘Hey, you’re not going to play because we’re going this direction.’ Sounds good, I can live with that. But I didn’t get that. Maybe it was just my time to get the raw end of the stick.”

In essence, Taurasi didn’t feel this gold medal matched up with her five others.

“I’ve done this five other times where I felt like I really earned it,” she said. “This one was the one that doesn’t belong.”

The Olympic pedigree of Diana Taurasi

In the annals of history, Taurasi has the most basketball gold medals in Olympic history.

She first joined the U.S. team during the 2004 games in Athens. From there, she played in Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, and Paris.

Each time, the U.S. women’s basketball won and continued one of the greatest runs in sports history.