In recent years, the question had been launched on Diana Taurasi in several ways and worded: when was she going to move away from basketball? Playing in her forties, when was she going to hang up her shoes?
As she had done in her game during a two and a half year career in college and professional basketball, she answered these questions with a spirit and an advantage about her. She would do it when she was ready, and the rest of the world would know once afterwards.
At the Olympic Games this summer, where she had made her sixth American team list, she was again questioned on an imminent retirement. “Only a woman would have 20 years of experience,” she said, “and it’s an Achilles heel instead of something that is precious.”
There was a seriousness in all her answers, and it was clear that retirement was not something that she was unaware, just something she did not feel yet was her next step. But the reality was there. In recent years, she has changed her diet and her recovery routine. It was open to the quantity of work it took to stay in the game and that work looked like work. But she always loved the game more than almost everything.
When she was on the ground, it was obvious.
For as much fire and combat that she played with it, few others gave off as much joy as Taurasi. Even in the 22nd year of the League, she delimited during the Lay-Up lines and approached her teammates and her teammates as if they were a necessary science. From his bun to his knee shorts (a style that had long spent his fashionable time), it was impossible not to – sometimes – see the child of California who had shown himself in Storrs, Conn., In 2000.
This is where many have met Taurasi for the first time, and it is now – 25 years later – that it is officially time to say goodbye to Taurasi the player.
Tuesday at the end of the afternoon, roughly when many people came only from work, Taurasi announced That she also finished with work. An email was given to media members with a series of quotes, a story broadcast in time and an announcement was made that Taurasi appears on Wednesday on “The View”, the popular Talk show ABC.
All of this was the peak of taurasi-expected but with an unconventional, discreet but obvious, a little language in the cheek, it seems. Much of what she did on the ground was with a wink. She was the ultimate goalkeeper who saw a game in front and knew a little more than everyone on the ground.
In The time articleTaurasi says she knew she was ready to move away from the game on New Year this year. “Mentally and physically, I’m just full,” she said. “This is probably the best way to describe it. I am satisfied and I am happy.
Few have more complete careers in all sports than Taurasi. She won three WNBA titles, six Olympic gold medals, three NCAA championships and six titles in the Euroleague. She became the first player in the history of the WNBA to score 10,000 points and perhaps the first to be called for 122 techniques. Between the two, there were individual records and distinctions, from the WNBA all-stars and an MVP season.
As a choice of WNBA N ° 1 draft in 2004, she won $ 40,800 during her recruit season. It leaves a league which has just signed a media rights contract of $ 2 billion and is on the precipice of a potentially revolutionary collective agreement.
She helped build and feed this growth with her game and the attention she brought to the game. Her competitiveness was often unrivaled and attracted fans in the game. Her strange capacity to do even those she was turning and was waste on the ground, has always made her a must.
“There were times when I wanted to fight it,” said Aces coach, Becky Hammon, who played against Taurasi for 10 seasons in the WNBA and was trained against her since 2022. “And then she would remember the Rookie season, The Taurasi was launched until he was playing and said” Get out of a screen to hit a blow. Then Taurasi turned around and wink to Plum. There was this Stormury match in 2022 when after forcing a jump ball, Taurasi and his best friend Sue Bird (in the last season of Bird in the League) held in the painting bickering against each other about potential faults.
The absence of taurasse of this next WNBA season will feel more than a little strange. She has been in the league for almost as long as it has existed. Some of the players drafted in this year’s class were born just before the Taurasi recruit starts in Phoenix. Her game inspired dozens of children to take a bullet (some of whom ended up playing against her in the League), and her resemblance – many assume that the WNBA logo is based on Taurasi with his emblematic bun (although he has never been confirmed, and the marketing society insists that this is not the case) – is rooted in W.
But the breadcrumbs that this day was going to happen was there from the start. In the accounting of his last home game last season, the Mercury praised shirts and memories that read: “If that’s all”. There was a tribute video. Even if she didn’t know when it was really that, there was a feeling that it could be close. Then, this offseason, the longtime teammate of Taurasi and close friend Brittney Griner signed with the dream of Atlanta, reporting a rupture of the group. It seemed to be an unlikely decision if Taurasi planned to stay another year.
Her retirement may seem even more of a blow because she comes in the heels of so many other Grands of the WNBA who have left the ground for the last time in recent seasons – Bird, Sylvia Fowles, Candace Parker. Now add Taurasi to this list. The league turns to a new generation which exploits a path open by the big ones, like Taurasi. Like others who have helped build inheritances and dynasties, these retired stars will not be part of certain fruit of their work while the game continues to reach new heights.
But, as Taurasi said, she leaves because she feels full and happy. At the end of a career that had ups and downs, more injuries than we probably know and at least a broken door, it seems to be a victory. That she does it according to his terms makes him perfectly.
During her first season as a WNBA player, she was selected for the 2004 Olympic list as a younger team player. She asked the Van Chancellor coach what he needed, and he told her that – with veteran players like Dawn Staley in the team – he needed Taurasi to act as the recruit she was, and she easily accepted. But during her first Olympic match with this team, she presented herself with two left shoes. A real recruit move, and something that could have had another player returned to the United States … if it was not Diana.
In her last WNBA season, she welcomed emblematic recruits of the League, players like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. They are part of the new wave of players who have had opportunities that she has never done, but who have – in part – because of the way Taurasi helped develop the game. In the last match that Taurasi played, she clogged. Another moment that seemed more than suitable.
She knows that she will miss the competition and everything that has just been a teammate. The League, his teammates and his opponents will certainly also miss. She can’t wait to spend time with her wife, Penny, and take her two children to school. There will be no long race towards the season with hours spent preparing your mind and body to compete for more than 30 games. Life will be radically different this summer from what it has been in the last two dozen, but it is ready for everything that could look like – 20 years in any professional sports league can certainly prepare athletes for the unknown and the unexpected.
What 20 years could not prepare an athlete is finally how to say goodbye, which is sometimes the most difficult thing for an athlete at his level and with his competition campaign. But like a large part of Taurasi’s career, she has managed an outing that everyone saw coming, but it still surprised us a little. It is her last elbow in the stomach and a wink as she goes down on the ground. Everything seems very Diana.
This article originally appeared in Athletics.
Phoenix Mercury, Connecticut Huskies, WNBA, Opinion
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