For Diana Taurasi this is a final Olympic hurrah as the crowning achievement of a unique career

August 10, 2024

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For Diana Taurasi this is a final Olympic hurrah as the crowning achievement of a unique career

PARIS — Chancellor knew he wanted Diana Taurasi on the 2004 Olympic team in Athens. She was young, skilled, confident, brash. He expected her to become a centerpiece of U.S. basketball in the years to come, but he also knew she could still add to the roster of superstars selected for his team — “Dream On” members who had helped recenter the world of women’s basketball by winning back gold in Atlanta in 1996.

On Taurasi’s first day with Team USA that year, the morning after helping UConn to a national title against Tennessee, she sat next to Chancellor on the bus and asked him a very direct question: What do you expect from me, coach?

“I want you to act like a greenhorn,” he told her.

“Coach Chancellor,” she said, “if that’s all you need, then I’m ready to go. I’m ready to help this team.”

That was Diana 20 years ago. It was her four days ago, too, when coach Cheryl Reeve, after 33 consecutive Olympic starts for Team USA, benched her in their quarterfinal against Nigeria in favor of 26-year-old Jackie Young, the second-youngest player on the roster. When the team broke the huddle, Taurasi bounded back to the bench as if it were the spot where the ball would be tipped. She sat down, rubbed her hands together and braced herself.

What did the team need from her in that game? Exactly that. To be the best leader and teammate, to pass the torch a little bit, and to stoke everyone’s fire along the way.

On Sunday, Taurasi will play her final Olympic basketball game. It’s hard to imagine a USA Basketball world without Taurasi. Of the program’s 60 consecutive victories, she’s been involved in 43.

“She defined USA Basketball,” Reeve said. “I don’t know if there’s a bigger competitor. … Dee is Mount Rushmore in that sense.”

“She defined USA Basketball,” USA coach Cheryl Reeve said of Diana Taurasi. “I don’t know if there’s a bigger competitor.” (Marvin Ibo Guengoer – GES Sportfoto/Getty Images)

After the team won gold in Tokyo in 2021, Taurasi, then 39, surprised everyone when she stared into the NBC camera and ended her post-match interview by shouting, “See you in Paris!” before walking away. Sue Bird, who had also been in on the interview, looked back at the camera with a laugh and noted, “She said what she said.”

While many assumed the statement was a joke, she didn’t. She said what she said. And then she did it. She came to Paris and led this team. First from the starting lineup and then from the end of the bench.

Against Nigeria, she did not play in the first half, instead jumping out of her seat when her teammates made good plays and coaching players when they came to the bench.

After the semifinal win over Australia, Reeve said that when this is all over, she would be able to speak more honestly about the burden of carrying the legacy of eight straight gold medals and the expectations of this program. She hasn’t slept much and has instead been toiling in the film room, imagining all the ways basketball could be unfair to one of the greatest squads ever assembled. She said she received a message from Dawn Staley, who coached the team to its seventh straight gold medal in Tokyo, saying, “I can’t tell you anything. I know what you’re feeling. You just have to get through it.”

What do you expect from me, coach? You can imagine what Taurasi said.

To sit on the bench, the way Taurasi is competing, in a way speaks to the selfless nature of this team. To be as steady as possible in a world where Reeve has to feel like Atlas on every corner. To be someone Reeve doesn’t have to worry about when she’s looking at the bench. Because they’ve got Dee. She’s seen it all. Nothing can faze her.

OK, would be Taurasi’s answer, if that’s all you need, then I’m ready to go. I’m ready to help this team.

At her sixth and final Olympics (that’s a fact — she joked to reporters in London before the Games that they would see her in Los Angeles… “on the beach having a beer”), her inclusion in the squad was contested by keyboard jockeys who could not name three players for the team.

But as she was in 2004, she is in 2024 — she’s here to help this team. It looks different now than it did 10 years ago, 20 years ago, but it’s still the same Diana. Yet at 42, she leads the guards and wings through every drill. She’s the first to stand up and clap from the bench. The first to high-five teammates. The first to pull players into the huddle, and the first in those huddles to speak.

Diana Taurasi has embraced the role of mentor on this U.S. team, coming off the bench in each of the Americans’ last two games. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

If that sounds cliché and unimportant, maybe it’s because the pressure this team is under is entirely his own. Other teams don’t need Dee because other teams don’t operate in this unique space of perfection.

Perhaps there is no better endorsement for Taurasi than the fact that the two best players in the world — A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart — are ceding their space, their talking time, their ability to “be first” to someone else.

“The best thing about DT is that she doesn’t change,” Wilson said. “She’s always so consistent in what she does — that’s a sign of greatness.”

Taurasi’s greatness has been shown in these Games. In big moments and small. In how she has carried herself. In her kindness in understanding her role, and how it has changed. In how she has remained consistent in who she is, not just in these six Games, but in her last 43.

“Think about that — two decades, not two Olympics,” said Geno Auriemma, a former U.S. national team coach and Taurasi’s college coach at UConn. “The dedication and the passion, the love for the game — all of that would be monumental in itself. But add to that the fact that she was the face of the team for two decades, the best player, the best teammate, the biggest winner in the history of the game.”

With that dedication and that time, the time has come. For several years now, Taurasi has been working to take care of her body in a different, more focused way — going vegan, doing longer pre- and post-training workouts, and treatment regimens that lasted longer than training itself. She’s made sacrifices to keep playing, to stay there for not only herself but her teammates.

On Sunday, Taurasi will pull on her No. 12 USA jersey for the final time in an Olympic setting. No athlete has ever done what she has done, and it’s hard to imagine it happening again. She’s spent nearly half her life representing the U.S. on an international stage. But before Taurasi came along, it was hard to imagine 60 straight victories or eight straight gold medals. Now, Team USA is about to do just that.

Her legacy is cemented, and that’s true, but in these final Games for her, she’s shown what’s possible to both her teammates and the next generation of players. Stewart calls her the “gold standard” of USA Basketball, and she is. And not just because she already has five gold medals to her name.

Every Olympic coach she’s had has asked her to do something different for her team — be a rookie, be a scorer, be an elite passer, be a leader, be a veteran, come off the bench, use your voice more than your passing skills. In short: be Dee.

“I’m here to compete. I’m here to play at a high level. I’m here to give to my teammates and I’m here to win a gold medal — that’s it,” Taurasi said upon arriving in Paris. “I don’t care about the last 20 years. I care about the next 20 years.”

The next 20 years of Team USA are in good hands. Taurasi made sure of that. Just ask Young. Or Wilson. Or Kahleah Copper. Or Sabrina Ionescu.

And four years from now, when this group is in Los Angeles going for a gold medal, hopefully she’ll be sitting on a beach somewhere, drinking a cold beer. She’s more than earned it.