As Diana Taurasi prepares for the 18th season of her WNBA career, she finds herself in learning mode.
The former UConn star is under a new head coaching staff and system with the Phoenix Mercury in 2022, also surrounded by several new players, such as Diamond DeShields and fellow former Husky Tina Charles.
“That’s the beauty of every new season,” Taurasi said on Monday. “It’s a new cast of teammates, of coaches this year. And every year is different. You can use past experiences to kind of help you get through training camp and the ebbs and flows of it, but it’s all new, and you kind of just come into it like a rookie and try to learn everything, try to take it all in and try to apply it on the court.”
At age 39, Taurasi certainly isn’t a rookie, though.
“I debate every day whether I’m going to come back,” Taurasi said, “and I keep coming back.”
Taurasi, who averaged 15.2 points, 4.9 assists and 4.4 rebounds per game last season, acknowledged the challenges that come with playing at this stage in her career. As she’s gotten older, the work she does off the court has become just as important as what she does on it.
“I still have this competitive fire,” Taurasi said. “I still love to play basketball, I still love coming to the gym. And things change as you get older, the work you have to put in gets harder. … I’ve really changed my daily life to be able to be here at 39 and compete and hopefully have a great year to help this team get back to where we gotta go.”
As Taurasi does so, one of the players competing alongside her will be Charles, who spent last season with the Washington Mystics. Though they didn’t overlap at UConn, the players are plenty familiar with each other from their time as teammates for Team USA as well as one season overseas with Turkish club Galatasaray in 2011-12.
“She’s one of my OGs,” Taurasi said of Charles. “Just an amazing human being and not to mention how amazing she is on the court. And she just brings a dynamic that we haven’t had in that post where she can stretch the defense. So I’m excited to get on the court with her and get that synergy going.”
Taurasi said she and Charles talked about teaming up in Phoenix back in the 2020 offseason, but it didn’t come together.
“We chatted about it a little bit the other day, how close we were then,” Taurasi said. “It was just, it wasn’t the right time. And it’s the right time now. We’re ecstatic she’s here. She’s ecstatic she’s here. So we’re excited to get to work and really find that chemistry on the court that we’ve had before.”
Another former UConn star, Kia Nurse, also returns to the Mercury roster, though she’s currently rehabbing a torn ACL suffered during the WNBA Finals last October.
“(Nurse is) doing great,” new Mercury head coach Vanessa Nygaard said on Monday. “She’s a fantastic athlete, she’s extremely diligent and she’s a real pro. So she’s done her rehab really well. ... We’re optimistic to get her back, hopefully — I’m not sure midseason, hopefully. Her safe return will be the No. 1 priority, like we’re not going to bring her back until she’s full go.”
Though Nurse’s injury, along with the impending situation with Brittney Griner in Russia, makes the path to doing so a much taller task, Taurasi has her eyes set on a fourth WNBA championship. Especially after Phoenix fell short in the finals to the Chicago Sky last season.
“Obviously the way the year ended, last year is still fresh in our minds,” Taurasi said. “It’s something that we think about, and those little things … in that Game 4 that slipped are things that are constant reminders. … It’s a new group, so we have to find this way of getting to know each other. So it’s a work in progress, but I think there’s a lot of excitement in the building.”
Lila Bromberg can be reached at lbromberg@courant.com and @LilaBBromberg on Twitter.
