After an offseason of hypothesis, WNBA star Diana Taurasi has formally introduced her retirement — hanging up her footwear after 20 seasons as one of many unequivocal faces of ladies’s basketball.
She revealed her determination, which was extensively anticipated to return sooner or later this offseason, in an interview with the TIME’s Sean Gregory.
“Mentally and bodily, I’m simply full,” she mentioned. “That’s most likely one of the best ways I can describe it. I’m full and I’m completely happy.”
For years, you allow us to borrow your mother – late nights, highway journeys, lengthy practices.
Thanks for letting us spend a lot time along with your mother over time pic.twitter.com/xOY4RFAOgw
— Phoenix Mercury (@PhoenixMercury) February 25, 2025
Diana Taurasi is without doubt one of the WNBA’s all-time greats — if not its best-ever
Taurasi is sometimes called the GOAT (the best of all time), and the accolades again it up: three WNBA championships, three NCAA titles, six EuroLeague titles, two-time WNBA Finals MVP, three-time EuroLeague MVP, the checklist goes on and on and on.
She leaves the WNBA as its all-time main scorer (with a more-than-3,000-point lead over Tina Charles for second place). She’s made extra three-point photographs than any participant in league historical past and has extra Olympic gold medals (6) than any basketball participant, male or feminine.
It’s a resume that, in the meanwhile, no different ladies’s basketball participant rivals.
“Daina Taurasi is without doubt one of the best opponents to ever play the sport of basketball on any stage,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert mentioned in an announcement.
Taurasi instructed Gregory she acknowledges her slew of information will finally be damaged.
“My scoring file, or the six gold medals, somebody’s going to return round that has the identical starvation, the identical habit to basketball, and put these information differently, a unique identify,” she mentioned. “That’s what sports activities is all about. That’s going to be enjoyable to look at. Hopefully not quickly.”
Why Taurasi’s retirement comes at an ideal time
When the Mercury level guard was drafted in 2004, ladies’s basketball was in a very completely different place. The WNBA was in its infancy, its future undetermined. And, all through her 20-year enjoying profession, the recognition and success of the league ebbed and flowed.
She leaves the game on the peak of its recognition, with a brand new technology of younger stars like Caitlin Clark bringing unprecedented ranges of viewership and engagement to ladies’s basketball. The league is within the midst of a large enlargement, set so as to add groups in Golden State (2025), Toronto (2026), and Portland (2026) within the upcoming seasons whereas greater than a dozen cities submit bids for groups to return to them.
A rookie class headlined by stars like Clark, Angel Reese, and Cameron Brink has contributed to the unprecedented viewership and engagement. And, within the coming years, a brand new technology of faculty standouts like UConn senior Paige Bueckers, USC sophomore JuJu Watkins, and Notre Dame sophomore Hannah Hidalgo will solely construct upon the league’s present momentum.
In some methods, it’s bittersweet that Taurasi solely acquired to expertise one yr of constitution flights, and needed to play in entrance of less-than-full arenas for a good portion of her profession. She needed to go abroad each offseason to complement the WNBA’s restricted salaries, going as far as to sit down out the 2015 WNBA season with a view to acquire her $1.5 million paycheck from her Russian skilled basketball workforce, which made her the very best ladies’s basketball participant on the earth on the time. That very same season was the WNBA’s worst-ever.
As viewership rises, the WNBA’s monetary mannequin will quickly change too; gamers are set to negotiate a brand new CBA, and salaries are anticipated to considerably rise.
Taurasi instructed Gregory she wasn’t certain about her subsequent steps post-retirement.
“That’s the query that I nonetheless don’t have a solution for,” says Taurasi. “I actually get pleasure from taking my children to highschool, being dwelling after they’re dwelling, not leaving for every week at a time.”
Possibly a profession in media is within the playing cards, or in teaching. Given her charismatic persona and uber-competitive nature, each appear to be possible prospects.
Or, perhaps she’ll step away from the sport altogether, as many retired athletes select to do.
However the actuality is that regardless of how she elects to intersect with ladies’s basketball transferring ahead, Taurasi can sleep at evening understanding that the sport she loves a lot is in a greater place than ever.
And, that no ladies’s basketball participant’s accomplishments rivals hers — not less than for now.
