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Diana Taurasi has never had much use for subtlety. It was obvious what kind of player she would be from the moment she became the No. 1 pick in the 2004 WNBA draft, from the moment she began her decorated college basketball career with the UConn Huskies, perhaps even from the moment that she picked up a basketball, period. But if you had to prove it with one specific example, an early game that showed the full range of both her personality and her skill, you could do worse than January 4, 2003.
This was the annual UConn rivalry game against Tennessee. It was the first Huskies’ roster that was hers as a leader: Taurasi’s first year on campus without Sue Bird and Swin Cash. This was not the best game that she would play in college. It was not the most important. (She would play in two more national championship games, both of them against Tennessee, and win them both.) But it may have been the one with the greatest sense of dramatic flair, and, naturally, the whole thing was directed by Taurasi.
She ended the first half with a long-shot, buzzer-beating, 60-foot heave. (It gave UConn the lead.) She ended the second half with an off-balance, high-drama, catch-and-shoot three. (It gave UConn overtime.) And she ended overtime with a gorgeous little floater in the lane. (It gave UConn the win.)
Taurasi had made sure that every big play in the game belonged to her. It was not just that she finished as the leading scorer, with 28 points, eight rebounds and four blocks, and it was not just that she was always the one with the ball in her hands as the clock ticked down. It was the fact that she used each shot as a way to raise the stakes. She had an innate sense of playing to the moment.
“You watch something like that, and sure, I can be a little surprised,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma told reporters after the game. “But the amazing thing is that I don’t think anything she did surprised her.”
A few days later, Taurasi watched the game tape back with Sports Illustrated, and she focused in on the heave at the end of the first half: “Look at that,” she said. “Elbows in. It was not a crazy fling. It was a shot.” She wanted people to know that none of this had been lucky. She worked to be that good.
Taurasi announced in an interview with TIME published Tuesday that she would retire from professional basketball after 20 years in the WNBA, all of them with the Phoenix Mercury, the same team that originally drafted her. Taurasi’s career is like no other. She holds a slew of records that may not be touched for years. (If her 10,646 points feel especially unlikely to be matched any time soon: Consider her 105 technical fouls.) She led the league in scoring five times and was First Team All-WNBA 10 times. She won three championships in the WNBA, six in EuroLeague, and has a record six gold medals from the Olympics, too. Those honors accurately suggest the scope of her talent. But they miss what has always made her truly special.
It was that sense of playing to the moment. There was never one that seemed too big for her. It was not just that she rose to the occasion for playoffs and rivalry games—though, of course, she did—but that she did it with such a presence. The polite way to say this was that she played with passion. A more accurate way to say it was that she was a sicko. This went beyond simply being confident or competitive. Taurasi knew how to play to a crowd, and she knew how to make a crowd hate her, too. She knew when to be a hero and when to be a heel. There was no more prolific scorer in the WNBA, and there was no more prolific trash-talker, either.
Her most quintessential highlights include all of the shots that made her a two-time Finals MVP. But they also include playfully kissing Seimone Augustus during a playoff game in 2013. (That one earned her a foul.) They include “I’ll see you in the lobby later.” They include beating up a door that later made an appearance on a parade float. Her personality was as iconic as her play.
She leaves behind a league that she has shaped. (The WNBA has never confirmed that its logo is modeled on a specific player—but anyone can recognize that bun.) Taurasi entered the league more highly anticipated than any rookie had ever been at the time: Her draft night set a viewership record that would not be broken until 20 years later with Caitlin Clark. Taurasi came into a version of the WNBA that was still establishing itself in the public eye, and she played through some of its leanest, most difficult years. Other big names cycled in and out. Taurasi was a constant. She played long enough to see the league tap into a new sense of possibility with a new generation of stars.
It might feel tempting to find something poetic in that timing. Taurasi played until the league had reached what felt like an obvious new inflection point. But that framing is too forced. It was simply time, 42-year-old Taurasi said. And she always did have a sense of the moment.
