MINNEAPOLIS — If this was it, then maybe there was no more fitting way for it to end.
Diana Taurasi fouled out one last time. As she walked to the bench, she shook her head at her coaches like, “I know, I know,” and then broke into a smile, again, like, “But of course. What else would you expect?” As the P.A. announcers called her name potentially one last time, the arena — an opposing venue, no less — rose to its feet to honor a player who has defined and changed the game.
Perhaps the fairy tale would’ve been Taurasi riding off into the sunset with a championship in hand, retiring while on top, and leaving the game with a win. Maybe that would’ve felt like a Disney movie. But the reality is — if this was it — she had that chance. She was a free agent. Multiple times. She could’ve left the Phoenix Mercury (her team for the entirety of her 20-year career) and joined another roster — one that wasn’t welcoming a new coach or rebuilding with new players. She could’ve chosen an easier road — with an exit more idealistic by narrative standards.
A standing ovation for Diana Taurasi in the Target Center 👏 pic.twitter.com/JzQxpEbQYa
— WNBA (@WNBA) September 26, 2024
But that’s not Taurasi. She’s not looking to appease writers or critics. At 42 with two decades in the pros, her daily routine of still being able to step on the court makes “the hard way” look normal. So, if this is it, then of course she didn’t look for the exit.
So, fouling out one last time while riding with a band of players who wanted to do the unexpected? Yeah, that sounds like Dee.
After all, everything she does sounds like Dee.
There was something particularly Taurasi-like in the rollout of this will-she-or-won’t-she retirement-tour/not-tour. The cryptic tweets, the GOAT T-shirt giveaway, the nostalgic video narrated by her wife at Phoenix’s last regular-season home game. Geno Auriemma shows up at the final home game and sits next to her parents. After the Mercury were booted from the first round of the WNBA playoffs on Wednesday night in Minnesota, she didn’t attend postgame media interviews.
Every time she was asked about retirement this year, she punted. She would wait until after the season, she reiterated, just as she had in the past. She’d think it over and make her decision later.
All the while, her eyes somehow both confirmed that she was lying to your face and she knew exactly what she was going to do … and somehow also delivering the transparent truth that she is a basketball junkie who would need to be dragged off the floor and damn you for suggesting otherwise.
That has always been a part of Taurasi’s appeal. She always kind of looks like she can see 12 paths to the same place and she’s just looking for the one that’s fastest or best or funniest. She knows more than you know and sees more than you see simply because she’s Dee and you’re not. So when it comes to the question of whether she’s retiring, she’s not here to make it easy by just saying, “Yep, see ya!” Instead, as she has with so many rookies before, there’s a giddiness in her pulling the strings. That coy, smirking look. That “I’ll let you hang out here just long enough, rookie, for me to crush your soul and then tap you on the shoulders to tell you that you’re doing just fine.”
When Auriemma recruited Taurasi to UConn, he told her he believed she had the potential to be the greatest women’s basketball player ever. After her freshman season, he told her she needed to grow up and lead. The Huskies lost in the Final Four that year, and she vowed they would never lose another tournament game. They didn’t.
She took the game seriously, but never took herself too seriously.
This is the person who forgot to check that she had both a left and right shoe ahead of her first Olympic game in Athens in 2004 (and subsequently, brought two left shoes). The person who, gleefully made innuendo after innuendo on live TV while commentating on games involving the South Carolina Gamecocks. But she’s also one of the few athletes for whom the saying “they hate losing more than they love winning” actually holds.
Ask that door in Chicago.
In the WNBA — if this was it — she leaves as a three-time champion, an 11-time All-Star, the league’s leading scorer and first ever player to cross the 10,000-point threshold.
She played the game longer and better than most ever will and with a fire that — even if this was it — still burns plenty bright. But at the end of the day, when she walked off that court for the last time, she was just a kid from Chino who loved the game. Gave it everything she had.
On Wednesday night in Minneapolis, one of Auriemma’s iconic lines kept popping into memory. Countless times, when asked why he was so confident in his early-2000s UConn squad, he’d simply explain in some variation: “We have Dee, and they don’t.”
Standing behind you every step of the way, Dee. pic.twitter.com/p96IOCtWP2
— Phoenix Mercury (@PhoenixMercury) September 20, 2024
So if this was it for her, then we should be grateful that, eventually, we all got to have Dee be a part of our basketball experience. Not just UConn or Auriemma. But her teammates and opponents, the fans and the sportswriters, the coaches and support staff, the rookies she punked and the vets she outplayed.
Everyone got to enjoy a piece of her experience because her game was bigger than herself. She personified swagger and trash-talking. She operated in a space where her commitment to the game is something that so few of us will ever truly understand. She shaped the game. Scored more than anyone. Hit more shots than anyone. Won more gold medals than anyone.
She didn’t just become the best, she became iconic. She’s not just known by a single name, but instead by a single letter. Not just recognizable by profile, but by a single hairstyle. So stubborn that years after her style has become a relic, she still wears baggy game shorts that stretch down to her knees.
If this was it, then she left on her own terms and in her own way. Should we really have expected anything less?
(Photo of Diana Taurasi: David Sherman / NBAE via Getty Images)
