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Diana Taurasi dribbled up the court at Arroyo High School. It was 1999, the summer before her senior year, and the nationally ranked Don Lugo High star was feeling it. She looked over to the opposing bench and right at Bishop Amat coach Richard Wiard.
“Hey Richie, watch this,” Taurasi said as she let it fly from half court.
The shot went in, and she laughed hysterically.
“It was Larry Bird-esque,” recalled Wiard, who had coached Taurasi‘s AAU team since she was in seventh grade. “It was a summer league game, but she just had that supreme confidence that she was going to do that. And she did.”
Bird. Magic. Kobe. Jordan. There was no shortage of legendary comparisons dropped by teammates, coaches and WNBA peers when trying to describe Taurasi, who announced her retirement Tuesday at age 42. But Taurasi is a legend all her own. She’s walking away from a league that she was instrumental in building after 20 years — all with the Phoenix Mercury — as a three-time champion, a most valuable player and two-time Finals MVP, a 14-time All-WNBA selection, an 11-time All-Star and the WNBA’s all-time leader in scoring and three-pointers. Don’t forget about her three NCAA titles, six Olympic gold medals and six Euroleague championships, either.
“Mentally and physically, I’m just full,” Taurasi told Time magazine. “That’s probably the best way I can describe it. I’m full and I’m happy.”
Beyond her list of accomplishments, though, Taurasi is defined by the bravado and swag that she played with every time she stepped on the court. It’s why so many people admired her, including Sparks star Kelsey Plum, who first saw Taurasi play at Connecticut when Plum was 10 years old.
“It was UConn versus Tennessee, a national game on ESPN, and I just remember obviously basketball-wise she was dominant, but it was really more her aura and personality that stood out,” Plum said.
Growing up, Plum always had been taught to “be nice to people” and “play nice” and to be a team player. But Taurasi was physical. She was shoving people around, talking trash to both players and fans alike. Plum never had seen anyone, especially a woman, play basketball that way.
She loved it.
The Phoenix Mercury’s Diana Taurasi is retiring after 20 seasons, ending one of the greatest careers in women’s basketball history.
“After that, I was just inspired,” Plum said. “I couldn’t put the ball down. That’s who I wanted to be, tried to emulate playing like.”
Former UCLA player and current Sparks assistant coach Nikki Blue saw Taurasi’s confidence firsthand when they attended a high school camp in Santa Barbara. She remembers the buzz — especially coming from other top players in California — vividly.
That’s Diana Taurasi.
She’s the No. 1 player in the nation.
Taurasi took the court. She was dribbling between the legs, throwing behind-the-back passes, just hooping. Threes, layups, fadeaways. Taurasi was hitting every shot at will from each and every spot on the floor.
“She was shooting from what’s now known as ‘Steph Curry range,’” Blue said. “And you know, just watching that, and never have been able to see something like that — especially from a female — I mean, we’re talking mid-90s. Mid-90s that she was doing these things.”
Wiard noticed it even earlier, when he first met Taurasi as a seventh-grader practicing with his AAU team, the Southern California Women’s Basketball Club.
To say that team was stacked would be an understatement. It boasted players that were headed to Tennessee, Northwestern and Rice, and Wiard estimates that at one point the entire starting five was committed to Division I schools. Taurasi stood out the most.
“She wasn’t afraid to have the ball, even as a seventh-grader, late in the game. Not a lot of kids have that, but she had it,” Wiard said. “She was supremely confident, and rightfully so, in her ability.
“She was just so talented, and she did everything well.”
Word started to spread and before long, gyms were packed at both her AAU tournaments and at Don Lugo, a rarity for girls’ basketball at the time.
UCLA director of basketball operations Pam Walker remembers going to the Tournament of Champions in Santa Barbara and seeing the stands overflowing, filled to the top with people eager to get a glimpse of Taurasi.
“She was also one of the first players of that generation, or any generation, with people coming to watch games to watch Diana,” said Walker, then an assistant for the Bruins. “People wanted to see her. It was recognized early in Southern California how special she was, and what a special talent, and how far she was going to go. And people wanted to be able to be a part of that. They wanted to see the magic, and she never disappointed.”
By the end of her high school career, Taurasi was a two-time Ms. Basketball State Player of the Year, Naismith Player of the Year, Parade Magazine National High School Player of the Year and the recipient of the 2000 Cheryl Miller Award from The Times.
“I remember when I first started at Don Lugo, and our first game had just a few people in the stands,” she told the Chino Champion in 2000. “Then with my last game there was about 3,500.”
Walker led UCLA’s Taurasi recruiting effort, and that often meant following her club team around. Most of the time Walker would end up staying at the same hotel and to kill time she would play dominoes in the hallway with coach Steve Kavaloski. Sometimes Taurasi would join them.
“She’d be in on anything if she thought it was a game to be won in anything it was about, whether it was H.O.R.S.E, whether it was an actual game, whether it was cards — she wanted to win,” Walker recalled. “That’s what made her special.”
The Bruins were coming off a Pac-10 championship in 1999 and they made a big push for Taurasi because they knew she wouldn’t just keep the momentum rolling, she had the potential to change the face of the sports scene in Southern California.
During Taurasi’s junior year she was at Pauley Pavilion for one of UCLA’s first home games of the season. The opponent? UConn. And while UCLA lost 113-102, Walker recalls Taurasi being excited about the Bruins afterward.
“She was all about it,” Walker said. “She was all about being around. And I think that there’s part of her that really wanted to stay local and be part of something big inside California.”
But UConn was competing for national championships. The Huskies had WNBA-level talent and a coach in Geno Auriemma who could push Taurasi to take the next steps in her development. Ultimately it was too good an opportunity to pass up, and Taurasi announced her commitment just before her senior season.
“The coaches, players, and tradition. They have it all,” she told the Chino Champion in 1999. “UConn is where I want to be.”
Four years and three consecutive championships with the Huskies later, it was clear Taurasi made the right choice. But Blue, an assistant coach for the Mercury from 2022 to 2024, reminds Taurasi constantly about what could’ve been by telling her, “You should’ve been a Bruin.”
Taurasi responds every time with, “You should’ve been a Husky.”
Don Lugo’s Larry Webster, Diana Taurasi’s high school coach for four years, said it was clear she was destined for a great basketball career.
Charisma Osborne, a rookie on Taurasi’s Mercury team last season and a UCLA alum, shares a similar running joke.
“She’s always telling me the story about how she was supposed to go to UCLA and she’s always like, ‘Go Bruins!’” Osborne said. “Like, obviously, she went to UConn. And, you know, she’s a diehard UConn girl. But we always joke about, like, ‘Aw man, you could’ve been a Bruin.’”
Osborne grew up in Moreno Valley, a 30-minute drive from Taurasi’s hometown of Chino. The Inland Empire connection is something the two bonded over and during one road trip when players’ families were allowed to travel with the team, Taurasi got to talk with Osborne’s parents about how close their childhood homes were to each other.
Osborne relished the opportunity to learn as much as she could from Taurasi. She took note of how she got to practice at the exact same time every day, never straying from her routine.
“It’s just been so cool to just, like, watch her in that because when she goes and plays on the court, you’re like, ‘This is why she plays the way she plays,’ because she practices really hard,” Osborne said. “She’s so intentional with everything that she does, and I think that’s what separates her.”
It’s not easy to make it to the WNBA, and it might be even harder to stay there. There are only 12 teams (though the league is expanding to 13 next season, and to 15 in 2026) with 144 roster spots. To not just stick around for 20 seasons, but also to stay at an elite level and be at the top of the league year in and year out for two decades the way Taurasi has, is unheard of.
In her two years with Phoenix, Blue saw Taurasi take one day off, and it was because she needed to take care of her wife and two kids, who had the flu.
“There was never another day,” Blue said. “Every workout that she had scheduled, she came to consistently. And that type of commitment and work ethic is something that a lot of people don’t want. They want to stay in the league 20 years, but they don’t know how to. And I think that her consistency is what contributes to her legacy and everything that she has become in her being able to play at such a high level for all these years.”
Osborne doesn’t even recall when she first watched Taurasi, who’s one of those people she just grew up knowing about.
“Everyone knows who Diana Taurasi is,” Osborne said. “She’s the G.O.A.T.”
When UCLA coach Cori Close talks with recruits, she always asks what player they want to be like. Ninety percent of the time, the answer is Taurasi.
Taurasi inspired others to take up the sport, helping fuel its rapid growth.
“The game has changed in 25 years. There’s more good players” Wiard said. “When Diana was playing, there was like four AAU teams in Southern California. Now, there’s like 4,000 AAU teams in Southern California.”
Close credited Taurausi for helping inspire Los Angeles’ success as a women’s basketball scene.
“I think about what we’re experiencing right now with UCLA and USC being the hub of all of women’s basketball right now in Southern California. And I don’t think we would be in this position to be doing this in both programs if it wasn’t for somebody like Diana Taurasi, who made being an elite female basketball player in Southern California the thing to do,” Close said. “I talk all the time about walking on the shoulders of somebody else, and Diana Taurasi is one of the people that we are walking on her shoulders right now. We are walking on the path that she blazed, and especially in Southern California.”
The WNBA had just started when Taurasi joined the league and she fought daily to help it continue to exist. Players had to accept odd schedules designed to get limited TV exposure, working out in any practice facilities they could borrow, commercial flights and low pay. Taurasi closed her career by helping the Mercury unveil their new practice facility named in her honor.
She is riding off into the sunset at seemingly the perfect time, passing the torch to the Caitlin Clarks and JuJu Watkins of the world, the next generation of superstars.
“She’s retiring, and the W is bigger than it’s ever been, but it’s because of a lot of different players. But specifically, Diana sacrificed a lot,” Plum said. “I mean, [she] didn’t get to reap the benefits of what’s happening now in the way that she should’ve. But her impact on our game, not just women’s basketball, but basketball is, I mean, a legacy that I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like it.”
