Here’s why Taurasi came back and what it means for Phoenix
Diana Taurasi isn’t done.
“I just love to compete, and it’s more proving it to myself than anyone else. It’s this feeling of not being good enough … I still want more,” she said in announcing her return to the Phoenix Mercury.
More?
More than being the WNBA’s alltime scoring leader — so far ahead of any other active player that it’s hilarious to try to figure out who could catch her?
DT has 8,931 points. Candice Dupree is next up on the active list at 6,811. Dupree has never scored more than 555 points in a season. It would take her four years of scoring at that rate (a personalbest Dupree set in 2008) to catch Taurasi, assuming DT played the rest of her career without taking another shot.
Yes. Apparently, more.
‘We have as good a chance as anyone’
More than three WNBA titles? Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson have four. Maya Moore and Seimone Augustus have four. Sue Bird just got her fourth last season. Why can’t Taurasi aspire to join that list?
“We have as good a chance as anyone else to win a championship,” Taurasi said. “I think that’s what I look forward to the most.”
More than cementing her legacy as one of the greats to do it all in one town?
“It means a lot to be in one place for my whole career … we know in the sports world — and in life, in general — you don’t know where it’ll take you sometimes,” Taurasi said.
These days, a one-city superstar is as rare as a millennial with a landline telephone.
Tamika Catchings did it. Her career ended in 2016. Same with Kobe Bryant. Derek Jeter did it. His last season was seven years ago.
Right now, it’s just DT and Sue Bird … and maybe Larry Fitzgerald? His future is still an open question.
“Who wouldn’t want to see Larry come back? … for us fellow athletes in Phoenix, we follow his footsteps in a lot of ways,” Taurasi said.
And maybe that’s why Taurasi is returning … maybe it has to do with setting an example?
DT discussed her return a day ahead of National Girls and Women in Sports Day, the first of which was held 35 years ago. Taurasi would have been 3.
She said Tuesday that she didn’t consider a professional career in the U.S. as a legitimate option until her junior year at UConn.
Today, girls and boys all over the country can read the news that Taurasi just signed a two-year contract worth almost $450,000. It’s not one of those headline numbers. (Fitzgerald, for the sake of comparison, earned $11 million last season.) But it’s a lot more than anyone could have expected her to earn playing ball in 1987, and with every shot she makes, DT boosts pay equality arguments.
So maybe she wants to be an example? But maybe she wants to just be, leaving her work to be an example unto itself for those who see something positive in it?
Either way, pro sports in this town are better off with her.
Phoenix stars like Britney Griner and
Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton and Kyler Murray and Clayton Keller and Ketel Marte will all have decisions to make about where they play and how they play. (It’s not something anyone wants to consider, but Fitzgerald is a free agent. He could go elsewhere, too.)
How is this group going to react when things get difficult? Will they pack up and move elsewhere? And who could blame them if they did? The Valley of the Sun is full of people who changed employers and moved here from somewhere else.
‘Being loyal ... that much more special’
But who could deny the significance if Griner and Booker and Ayton and Murray and Keller and Marte (and, yes, Fitzgerald, too) fought through every adversity and found a way to win at the highest levels right here in town?
“Being loyal through thick and thin, ups and downs,” Taurasi said, “it makes the special moments that much more special.”
But maybe DT just stayed because she loves to hoop? And if she’s still playing at a high level, why not keep it going?
She averaged 18.7 points and 4.5 assists in the WNBA bubble, and it’s not like her squad was thumped out of the playoffs. The Mercury lost to the Lynx by just one point in an elimination game.
That’s probably what it is. Sports writers and fans get all existential and mushy about this kind of stuff. Big-shot athletes say things such as this: “I didn’t think about retiring, at all.”
This is just what she does. Phoenix is just where she does it.
And certainly, we should all be grateful that we’re getting a further opportunity to watch a player who was born to do what she’s doing in a town where she was meant to get things done.
“When they say my name,” Taurasi said, “I want them to say Phoenix Mercury and vice versa. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”