Would she or wouldn’t she?
A crowd of 11,333 came to the Footprint Center in Phoenix Thursday night to watch a WNBA game between the host Mercury and the Seattle Storm but more to perhaps witness history. Would it be the final regular-season game in the illustrious career of UConn women’s basketball legend and Mercury great Diana Taurasi?
After coming out for the final time with 3:05 left to a standing ovation, hugging her parents — Mario and Lili — on her way to the bench and taking part in a postgame ceremony that included a video to celebrate her 20 years in Phoenix, the 42-year-old guard addressed the Mercury fans, known as the X-factor, who chanted “one more year” to convince her to return.
Taurasi, the overall No. 1 pick of the 2004 WNBA Draft by the Mercury after she led the Huskies to three straight national championships, had nine points to increase her all-time league-leading total to 10,646 on a trio of 3-pointers in 18 minutes as Phoenix used the outing as a tune-up for the postseason. Seattle opened on a 10-0 run and led by as many as 24 in the first quarter as it coasted to an 89-70 win.
The Mercury (19-21) are the No. 7 seed for the playoffs and will open the best-of-three first-round series against the second-seeded Minnesota Lynx (30-10) Sunday at the Target Center in Minneapolis.
“I got to the locker room and I was talking to BG (teammate Brittney Griner) and I’m like, ‘There are still days that I could still do this. I still want to play basketball,’ ” Taurasi said during her postgame press conference. “Then there’s the flip side where there are days I’m crawling out of bed. That’s the struggle you have when you get to this point in your career. You have to do so much to be able to get back on the court. It’s bittersweet in a lot of ways. Once the season is over I’ll have a better idea of what it looks like for me in the future.”
If it is the last time — a theme from the Mercury on X (formerly Twitter) since last week to promote their last two home games — it brought out some stars including UConn coach Geno Auriemma, associate head coach Chris Dailey, assistant coach and former classmate Morgan Valley, Taurasi’s former UConn and Olympic teammate Sue Bird, and several other former teammates and classmates from UConn and Don Lugo High in her hometown of Chino, Calif.
Also in attendance were her wife and former teammate Penny Taylor and their children — son Leo and daughter Isla.
She saved a special shoutout for her parents and sister Jessika.
“My family has been there since Day One,” Taurasi said. “What they did was they let me do what I wanted to do. That’s a lesson as a parent a lot of us can take. When someone wants to do it really bad that’s when really great things happen. It’s not when you’re being pushed or ushered in a certain direction. They always let me be myself. When it came to basketball, I can’t tell you how much support I had from my family, extended family, coaches, friends, ex-teammates.”
Before the game, she received a hug from Auriemma, who coached Taurasi for not only her four years (2000-04) at UConn but in 2000 and 2001 with USA Basketball youth teams and from 2009-16 with the senior national team, winning two Olympic and two FIBA World Cup gold medals.
She is one of 12 players to win NCAA and WNBA titles and Olympic and World Cup gold medals.
“Coach means the world to me,” Taurasi said. “I got to Connecticut as an 18-year-old who didn’t really know much but thought I knew a lot. He quickly told me I didn’t. He let me know that every day because he knew if I could just scratch the surface where he thought I could go, something special could happen.
“Twenty years later, to still have his love, his friendship, his mentorship, his family, I looked over and he was chatting with my dad in Italian and it felt like my (recruiting) home visit 25 years ago in Chino. My mom kicking my dad under the table, ‘Shut up!’ They were drinking wine. All those memories come back to you.”
Thursday night’s game meant nothing in the playoff picture to the Mercury as they were locked into the No. 7 seed and a first-round matchup with Minnesota.
But it wasn’t just another game.
“I wasn’t trying to feel any kind of emotion, I was just trying to take it all in,” Taurasi said. “I was trying to focus on the game a little bit, too. It’s just a lot of memories that go through your mind — the good ones, the bad ones. But more than anything I’m really grateful to have really good people around me my whole career and going forward. It’s been the same faces for 20 years and that feels just as good as wearing the jersey for 20 years.”
The outcome was never in doubt. It was just a matter when Taurasi would come out.
She was replaced with 6:30 to go in the third quarter. With 3:11 remaining in the fourth quarter, she was urged by coach Nate Tibbetts and her teammates to make one more brief appearance as teammate Amy Atwell took free throws. She did. It lasted six seconds as Phoenix’s Monique Billings committed a foul to allow Celeste Taylor to come back in for Taurasi and give the fans one more chance to cheer their thanks.
“In a moment like that it’s for her but also for these people who have supported her for 20 years,” Tibbetts said.
“Credit to her and how she handled everything. It was a special, special night just to see … She’s been doing this for a long time. Her parents have watched hundreds if not thousands of games. And they’re crying and smiling like she’s an eight-year-old girl out there. This is a moment that when you experience it you’ll remember it forever.”
For Phoenix to play again at the Footprint Center in the postseason, it would need to at least split the first two games in Minnesota as it would host a deciding Game 3 on Sept. 27.
If the Mercury upset the Lynx, it would host Game 3 and, if necessary, Game 4 of the best-of-five semifinals against either the third-seeded Connecticut Sun or No. 6 seed Indiana Fever.
“You can’t stop and think and reminisce and think about is it the last time walking down that tunnel, the last time putting on that jersey at home,” Taurasi said. “I’ve just had so many great memories in this building. The city has been second to none to me. It’s home now.”
Whether the home crowd in Phoenix will see a Mercury player wear uniform No. 3 again remains to be seen.
The decision could be announced next week, or next month, but probably before next year. Her focus for as long as Phoenix is alive in the playoffs is to bring home the franchise’s fourth WNBA title to go with the ones she led them to in 2007, 2009, and 2014.
“Whether I come back next year or not, I’ll always be a part of this franchise, I’ll always be it cheering it on,” Taurasi said. “I’ll always be a part of it through the wins and the losses. I’m going to feel what the X-factor feels every night when they come to this arena expecting a show. That’s the beauty of playing here and the standard we’ve set the last 20 years, trying to win a championship every single year. That’s given me great pride to come back year after year with that vision of we can do it again this year. We’re going to get on the plane tomorrow and have that same vision.
“I would say it’s 50-50. For every good day, I have a bad day. You wake up and you’re like, ‘My neck hurts today, for what?’ There are a lot of those days. And then I have days where I feel great out there and I feel like I could do this forever. I still got it. But I have to take a step back and think about what’s next in my future. I have to think about my family. So as soon as we win this championship the decision will come quick.”
