A last Olympic hurray for Diana Taurasi to end a unique career

PARIS – Van Chancellor knew he wanted Diana Taurasi on the 2004 Olympic team in Athens. She was young, capable, confident and brash. He expected her to be a centerpiece of USA Basketball for years to come, but he also knew she could still contribute to the squad of superstars selected for his team – “Dream On” members who had helped the revival of American basketball. -putting the world of women’s basketball center stage by recapturing the gold in Atlanta in 1996.

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

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

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

That was Diana twenty years ago. It was also her four days ago, when coach Cheryl Reeve, after 33 consecutive Olympic starts for Team USA, moved her to the bench in their quarterfinal against Nigeria in favor of 26-year-old Jackie Young, the second-youngest player in the world . the grid. When the team broke up the meeting, Taurasi jumped back to the bench as if that was where the ball would be tipped. She sat down, rubbed her hands together and locked herself away.

What did the team need from her in that match? To do just that. Be the best leader and teammate, passing the torch a little and lighting everyone else’s fire along the way.

Taurasi will play her last Olympic basketball match on Sunday. It’s hard to imagine an American basketball world in which Taurasi doesn’t play a role. Of the program’s 60 consecutive wins, she has been part of 43.

“She defined American basketball,” Reeve said. “I don’t know if there is a bigger competitor. … Dee is Mount Rushmore in that regard.”

After the team won gold in Tokyo in 2021, Taurasi, then 39, surprised everyone when she stared into the NBC camera and ended her postgame interview by shouting, “See you in Paris!” before she walked away. Sue Bird, who was also at the interview, looked at the camera with a smile and noted, “She said what she said.”

Although many assumed the statement was a joke, 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 line-up and then from the end of the bench.

Against Nigeria, she didn’t come into the game in the first half and instead jumped out of her seat first with good plays from her teammates and coached people as they came to the bench.

After the semi-final 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 consecutive gold medals and the expectations of this program. She hasn’t gotten much sleep and has instead been toiling in the film room, imagining all the ways basketball could be unfair to one of the best rosters ever assembled. She said she received a message from Dawn Staley, who coached the Tokyo team to its seventh consecutive gold medal, saying, “I can’t tell you anything. I know what you feel. You just have to get through it.”

What do you need from me, coach? You can imagine Taurasi saying.

Him being on the bench, as the competitive Taurasi is, speaks in some ways to the unselfish nature of this team. To be as stable 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 down on the couch. Because they have Dee. She’s seen everything. Nothing can worry her.

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

In her sixth and final Olympics (that part is a fact – she joked 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 selection is argued by keyboard jockeys who couldn’t name three players on the team.

But just like in 2004, she is in 2024: she is here to help this team. It looks different now than it did ten years ago, twenty years ago, but it’s the same Diana. Still, at age 42, she leads the guards and wings through every drill. She is the first to stand up and clap from the couch. First to give a high five to teammates. First to draw players into the group, and first in that group to speak.

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

If that sounds cliche and inconsequential, maybe it’s because the pressure this team is under is all its 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 speaking time and their ability to “be first” to someone else.

“The biggest thing I like 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.”

The greatness of Taurasi has been evident during these Games. In moments big and small. In how she handles 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, former U.S. national team coach and Taurasi’s college coach at UConn. “The dedication and passion, the love for the game – all of this in itself would be monumental. But add to that the fact that for 20 years she was the face of the team, the best player, the best teammate and the biggest winner in the history of the game.

With that dedication and that time has come age. Taurasi has been making an effort for several years to take care of her body in a different, more targeted way: she became vegan, doing longer stretches before and after training and treatment regimens longer than the practice itself. She sacrificed herself to keep playing, to be here not only for herself but for her teammates.

On Sunday, Taurasi will don her No. 12 USA jersey for the final time in an Olympic setting. No athlete has done what she’s done before, and it’s hard to imagine it happening again. She has spent almost half her life representing the US on an international stage. But before Taurasi came along, it was hard to imagine 60 straight wins or eight straight gold medals. Now Team USA is right on the precipice.

Her legacy is cemented, and has been, but in these final Games she has shown both her teammates and the next generation of players what is possible. Stewart calls her the “gold standard” of American basketball, and that is exactly what 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 newcomer, be a scorer, be an elite passer, be a leader, be a veteran, come off the bench, use your voice more then you pass. skills. In short: Be Dee.

“I’m here to compete. I’m here to play at a high level. I am here to give to my teammates and I am here to win a gold medal – that’s all,” said Taurasi when she arrived in Paris. “I don’t care about the last twenty years. I worry about the next twenty years.”

The next 20 years of Team USA are in good hands. Taurasi took care of it. Just ask Jong. Or Wilson. Or Kahleah Copper. Or Sabrina Ionescu.

And in four years, when this group goes for a gold medal in Los Angeles, hopefully they will be sitting on a beach somewhere drinking a cold drink. She more than deserved it.

GO DEEPER

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