Kelsey Plum decided that she wanted to be a basketball player when she was 9 years old. Sitting on the couch at home in California, watching Tennessee play the University of Connecticut back in 2004, she saw Diana Taurasi, and she knew that was who she wanted to be. Plum made it happen. Two decades later, she is now on the national team with Taurasi, whose career has stretched long enough to see her play alongside women who watched her when they were little girls.
Taurasi has become one of the WNBA’s defining players. Now in her 20th season, she’s its all-time leading scorer, a three-time champion and 14-time selection for All-WNBA. During last weekend’s All-Star Game, reminders of her legacy were everywhere. The festivities were held in Phoenix, the city in which she has spent her entire career, and they functioned as a send-off for the Olympics, where she will compete for her sixth consecutive gold medal. As the league used the weekend as a celebration of its recent, significant growth, it was hard not to think of the player who has been there longer than anyone else. Taurasi has seen the WNBA through years of growing pains into what is now, finally, a record boom.
But one aspect of the game that has stayed exactly the same for her?
Her look. Taurasi still rocks the slick bun and big, old-school shorts that she’s worn since her college days. And it’s that last one that feels like the best measure of just how long the veteran has been around. The average WNBA shorts now fall somewhere around mid-thigh. Some are rolled even shorter. Taurasi has never deviated from having hers hit at the knee. She’s kept up with changes in the game in terms of strategy and workload and expectations. Yet when it comes to her shorts? Taurasi remains decidedly a child of the ’90s.
“That’s her thing, right?” Plum laughed. “I don’t think she’s going to change. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Dee is one of one. She’s going to wear what she wants. And I mean, she’s always stylish anyway, so I love it.”
Enough to ever consider emulating her in this respect?
“No, I like to show my kneecaps,” Plum says. “Just a personal preference.”
At 42, Taurasi is, unsurprisingly, the oldest player in the WNBA. She’s a mini-generation unto herself: There is no one in the league within five years of her. (There are three head coaches younger than her, too.) But even if you limit the conversation to players in their mid-30s, those closest to her peers, old enough to remember the era of big shorts that shaped Taurasi? Nope, they say. Not for them anymore. That’s all Taurasi.
“That’s DT,” says 36-year-old Connecticut Sun forward DeWanna Bonner. “That’s her style. It’s all her. She owns it. Copyright it.”
While there’s more attention than ever on player fashion off the court—walking into games has become akin to walking down a runway—on-court style is still big. A single leg sleeve has become a signature for players including A’ja Wilson and Angel Reese. Some are known for rolling the waistband of their shorts or tucking them into their spandex underneath. (That group includes Taurasi’s Phoenix Mercury teammate Sophie Cunningham.) There are countless avenues for uniform customization. And then there’s Taurasi, who has stuck with her classic look all these years, ’90s shorts that look downright voluminous next to their modern counterparts on the court.
“She’s going to rock it until she’s retired, clearly,” Dallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale says with a grin. “That’s not my fashion, but that’s what she’s been doing. I love when people stay true to who they are and don’t change just because the world is changing.”
That idea is echoed by other players. The big shorts are quintessentially Taurasi, of a piece with her signature, swashbuckling swagger. Here is a player who has always done what she wanted and waited for the rest of the world to get on board with it. (That has included, naturally, a bit of abrasiveness: Among her myriad other records, she is the all-time leader in fouls, both personal and technical.) There has never been any concession to mainstream popularity here. If you’d like to suggest that she change up her look, well, do so at your own risk.
“When you’re talking about greatness, she has to be up there. The things that she’s done with this franchise, the way that she’s grown this league, I can only imagine the things that she’s seen,” says Wilson, who is now on her second Olympic team alongside Taurasi. “And I think when you talk about somebody that has really just been themselves, through and through, I think of DT… It’s always been consistent. I love people like that. I love people who aren’t cookie-cutter, who don’t sugarcoat anything, and they’re just real and true.”
That spirit feels like as much a part of legacy as everything she has done on the court. But good luck ever catching a glimpse of her knees.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Diana Taurasi and the Last of the Big Shorts.
