The fastest to 5,000 points, then 7,000 and finally a nice round 10,000. Three championships. Two Finals MVPs. A Most Valuable Player award as a guard in a frontcourt-dominant league.
Diana Taurasi’s Hall of Fame-worthy accomplishments in the WNBA would require a list so long it would unfurl to the floor like an ancient scroll. And even that might not be enough for a 20-year career of consistent greatness. On Tuesday, she retired as the most decorated player to step foot in the WNBA — a career that also included multiple NCAA titles, EuroLeague championships and Olympic gold medals.
In the coming decades following her retirement, those numbers will be used as comparisons to size up the next wave of basketball greats. What they don’t describe is what she’s meant to women’s basketball beyond the scoring records and accolades.
Before the Caitlin Clark effect, there was Taurasi. Women athletes rarely made it into newspapers during her collegiate era and there wasn’t widespread use of social media (Facebook was founded in 2004). But three consecutive championships at Connecticut will thrust any team and star player into the national spotlight. She took over games with a swagger and confidence some might even call cocky, and she became women’s basketball’s most recognizable star.
The attention didn’t change her. Forget demure. Taurasi was unabashedly herself, a stone-cold competitor on the court who talked trash and gained whatever advantage she could to win. And she did a lot of it.
“The best way to explain it is that we have Diana and you don’t,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said in what became an iconic quote before she led the Huskies to their third title. “And every other team in this tournament wishes they had her.”
The WNBA, which hadn’t yet turned 10 when the Phoenix Mercury drafted Taurasi at No. 1 overall, was happy to embrace her. Casual sports fans probably couldn’t name every WNBA team of that era, nor many of its best players. But they knew Taurasi. That matters when a league is in its infancy fighting to be seen on the same level as men’s professional leagues decades its senior.
Her play spoke for itself, and her demeanor, depending on whom you ask, made her a hero (to the Mercury’s X-Factor fans) or a villain (probably to the refs and any opponent). Through the years, she became the league’s ambassador without necessarily being its outspoken face. It was her play, commitment and refusal to accept “less than” that continuously set new standards from her first season to her last.
Salaries were and are chief among them. Taurasi made $40,800 as a rookie in 2004, approximately half of the season’s veteran maximum, and followed the worn path of playing overseas to supplement it. By 2014, her salary rose to $107,000, slightly under the new league maximum. She was already an MVP and held the league’s single-season scoring record, which was broken by A’ja Wilson this past season, and sat less than 1,000 points from the all-time career record. The Mercury won their third championship that 2014 season, joining titles in 2007 and 2009.
After 20 years of playing in the WNBA, Diana Taurasi is officially retiring 🧡
Thank you Diana for changing the game forever, all of the accolades could never amount to the type of person and edge you embodied when you stepped out there on the court
One-of-One 💐 pic.twitter.com/dEtE4NDrGH
— WNBA (@WNBA) February 25, 2025
Months later she sent a shockwave through the league that still reverberates. Taurasi opted to skip 2015 entirely at the request of her Russian team, UMMC Ekaterinburg. Taurasi hadn’t experienced a break in more than a decade while winning with Phoenix, with the national team (two Olympic golds and two World Cup medals) and with Ekaterinburg (five EuroLeague titles, three Russian Cup titles). Ekaterinburg, which reportedly paid Taurasi around $1.5 million a season, offered to cover more than her Mercury salary to sit out and she took it, even though the Mercury were going for a repeat.
It sparked a larger conversation about salaries and the reality that superstars who held an emotional connection to growing the WNBA at home could reach a point where they would accept the larger dollar signs they saw elsewhere. Taurasi returned to the Mercury in 2016, won gold with the national team that summer and continued playing for Ekaterinburg until her European retirement in December 2017. But the choice still comes up in an era of prioritization controversy.
“It’s a sacrifice I look back on,” Taurasi said during 2024 All-Star Weekend in Phoenix. “And it was a huge, huge sacrifice you’ve got to make for you and your families. Hopefully we can have [higher salaries] here. And we can grow the league.”
The All-Star festivities gave an air of the end being near for Taurasi, who spent her entire career in Phoenix. She is likely the last to do so as free agency heats up in the WNBA and teams offer salaries and amenities to lure in superstars. The Mercury are now part of that club.
The franchise kicked off All-Star Weekend by naming the court at their new lavish practice facility in her honor. Taurasi said she was speechless, but never made it about herself in the ensuing days full of questioning. It was about the team providing top-notch support to its elite athletes, finally, after all these years. It is, she repeatedly said, what they deserve.
Taurasi also deserved it, but came up in a much different era. She scored nearly all of her 10,646 career points without year-round access to a practice facility, recovery facility or support center. She won her championships sans elite-level salaries. And she lifted the MVP trophy with high-end endorsements that pale in comparison to what today’s rookies make off the court.
She doesn’t want the next generation to have to do the same, and because of Taurasi, they’ll take a run at breaking her records with more than she ever had.
