Making a case as the greatest women’s player
PHOENIX — With one layup Sunday in Los Angeles, Phoenix Mercury forward Diana Taurasi became the WNBA’s alltime scoring leader, earning kudos from former NBA great Kobe Bryant, sitting courtside to watch Taurasi make history, as well as the Staples Center crowd and players and coaching staffs on both the Mercury and the Sparks.
The achievement adds to an already sterling resume that boosts her case as the greatest women’s basketball player ever.
But that’s a debate for someone else to settle. Brash and fiery on the court, Taurasi would prefer to defer when it comes to her place in the annals of the game.
“When you get to my age, you can’t look back, you can’t look forward,” Taurasi, 35, said Wednesday. “If anything, I’m pretty proud to play this much basketball well into my college and professional career. I’ve been really lucky: one, being really healthy and two, being around really good people. When I look at it that way, I feel like I’m the luckiest basketball player of all time.”
The case for best player of all time is pretty strong.
Taurasi led Connecticut to three NCAA titles. She was the WNBA’s Rookie of the Year in 2004, won three WNBA titles with the Mercury and was the finals MVP twice. Taurasi was the WNBA MVP in 2009, earned five scoring titles, was named to the All-WNBA team nine times and won four Olympic medals.
She has also dominated overseas, earning five Euroleague titles in addition to being league MVP twice and finals MVP twice.
Taurasi added another milestone Sunday in her hometown, eclipsing Tina Thompson’s WNBA scoring mark of 7,488 points.
She’s still one of the WNBA’s best players, a heady scorer and playmaker who has a knack for seeing plays develop before anyone else. This season, she’s seventh in league scoring at 18.3 points per game.
Taurasi signed a contract extension in May that will take her through 2020, when she hopes to play for a fifth Olympic gold in Tokyo.
Even if Taurasi doesn’t win another title or gold medal, she has helped change women’s basketball, shaped the way it’s played and helped boost its popularity. “The one thing I’ve always said is I want to be a good teammate,” she said. “That’s the one thing I learned from being at Connecticut ... is to get the best out of yourself and the best out of other people.”