For Diana Taurasi, one last Olympic hurrah to cap a one-of-a-kind career

PARIS — Van Chancellor knew he wanted Diana Taurasi on the 2004 Olympic team in Athens. She was young, skilled, confident, brash. He expected she would be a centerpiece of American basketball in the years to come, but he also knew that she would still be able to contribute on the squad of superstars that had been selected for his team — “Dream On” members who had helped re-center the world of women’s basketball by retaking the gold in 1996 in Atlanta.

On Taurasi’s first day with Team USA that year, just the morning after she had helped UConn to a national title over Tennessee, she sat down on the bus next to Chancellor and asked him a very straightforward question: What do you need out of me, Coach?

“I need for you to act like a rookie,” he told her.

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

That was Diana 20 years ago. It was her four days ago, too, when after 33 consecutive Olympic starts for Team USA, coach Cheryl Reeve moved her to the bench in their quarterfinal game 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 where the ball would be tipped. She sat down, rubbed her hands together and locked in.

What did the team need from her in that game? To do exactly that. Be the best leader and teammate, to pass the torch a bit and light everyone else’s fires on the way.

On Sunday, Taurasi will play in her final Olympic basketball game. It’s hard to imagine a USA Basketball world in which Taurasi doesn’t play a part. Of the 60-consecutive wins the program has had, she has been a part of 43.

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

After the team won gold in 2021 in Tokyo, Taurasi, then 39, surprised everyone when she stared into the NBC camera and ended her postgame interview by yelling, “See you in Paris!” before she walked off. Sue Bird, who had been in on the interview, too, looked back at the camera with a laugh and remarked, “She said what she said.”

While many assumed the statement was in jest, she did not. 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 didn’t enter the game in the first half, and instead was the first to jump out of her seat with good plays from her teammates and coached people up when they came to the bench.

After the semifinal win over Australia, Reeve said that when this is all over, she could speak more truthfully about the burden of carrying the legacy of eight straight gold medals and the expectations of this program. She hasn’t slept much and instead has toiled in the film room imagining all the ways basketball could be unfair to one of the greatest rosters ever assembled. She said she received a message from Dawn Staley, who coached the team in Tokyo to its seventh consecutive gold medal, that read: “There’s nothing I can say to you. I know what you’re feeling. You just have to go through it.”

What do you need out of me, Coach? You can imagine Taurasi saying.

To take a benching, as competitive Taurasi is, in a way speaks to the unselfish nature of this team. To be as steady as possible in a world where Reeve must feel like Atlas at every corner. To be someone who Reeve doesn’t have to worry about when she looks down the bench. Because they have Dee. She has seen everything. Nothing rattles her.

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

In her sixth and final Olympics (that part is fact — she quipped to reporters in London ahead of the Olympics that they would see her in Los Angeles … “on the beach with a beer”), her inclusion in this roster has been argued by keyboard jockeys who couldn’t name three players on 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 a decade ago, two decades ago, but it’s the same Diana. Still, at 42, she leads the guards and wings through every drill. She’s the first to stand up and clap from the bench. First to high-five teammates. First to pull players into the huddle, and first in those huddles to speak.

Diana Taurasi has embraced the mentor’s role 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, then perhaps it’s because the pressure this team exists underneath is entirely its own. Other teams don’t need a Dee because other teams don’t operate in this unique space of perfection.

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

“The biggest thing that I love about DT is that she does not change,” Wilson said. “She is always so consistent in what she does — that is a sign of greatness.”

Taurasi’s greatness has been on display through these Games. In moments big and small. In how she has handled herself. In her graciousness in understanding her role, and how it has changed. In how she has remained constant 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, former U.S. national team coach and Taurasi’s college coach at UConn. “The commitment and passion, the love of the game — all these in and of itself would be monumental. But add in that for two decades she was the face of the team, the best player, best teammate and the greatest winner in the history of the game.”

With that commitment and that time has come age. For several years now, Taurasi has made efforts to take care of her body in a different, more focused, way — went vegan, did lengthier pre- and post-practice stretching and treatment regimens longer than the practice itself. She has sacrificed to continue to play, to continue to be here for not just herself but her teammates.

On Sunday, Taurasi will put on her No. 12 USA jersey one final time in an Olympic setting. No athlete has done what she has done before, and it’s hard to imagine it happening again. Nearly half of her life has been spent representing the U.S. on an international stage. But before Taurasi came around, it was hard to imagine 60-straight wins or eight-straight gold medals. Now, Team USA is on the precipice of just that.

Her legacy is cemented, and has been, but in these final Games for her, she has 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’s just that. And not just because she already has five gold medals to her name.

Every Olympic coach she has 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 when she arrived in Paris. “I don’t care about the last 20 years. I’m worried about the next 20 years.”

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

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

GO DEEPER

Can the rest of the world catch up to Team USA? Our women’s basketball experts debate.

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(Top photo of Diana Taurasi during Friday’s semifinal game against Australia: Daniela Porcelli / Eurasia Sport Images / Getty Images)