Diana Taurasi spent two decades turning Phoenix into her building, and on Monday night the Mercury made it official by hanging No. 3 from the rafters for good. The ceremony went down at halftime of Phoenix's game against the expansion Portland Fire, with the whole night built around one player.
3x WNBA Champion. 2x WNBA Finals MVP. 1x Kia WNBA MVP. 14x All-WNBA. 11x WNBA All-Star. The @PhoenixMercury will retire @DianaTaurasi's #3 jersey following tonight's 7pm/et game on ESPN!
The resume speaks for itself: 3 WNBA titles, 2 Finals MVPs, a Kia MVP, 14 All-WNBA nods and 11 All-Star selections. Taurasi retired as the WNBA's all-time leading scorer with 10,646 points, a record that isn't getting touched anytime soon, and she walked out of Phoenix with 6 Olympic gold medals to boot. The Mercury made her the fifth player in franchise history to get her number retired, joining Michele Timms, Penny Taylor, Jennifer Gillom and Bridget Pettis in the Ring of Honor.
This wasn't a quiet family affair, either. Cameras caught Taurasi arriving with her family ahead of the game, and the building kept filling up with people who mattered to her career.
Diana Taurasi arrives with her family 🤩 The @PhoenixMercury will retire @DianaTaurasi's #3 jersey following tonight's 7pm/et game on ESPN! https://t.co/ljSHerxboM
Devin Booker showed up to celebrate, which tracks given how many years of Phoenix sports history the two have overlapped in that building. Michael Phelps was also in the building for it, an odd-but-fitting pairing of two athletes who spent their careers stacking hardware most people will never sniff.
Devin Booker is in the building to celebrate Diana Taurasi 👏 The @PhoenixMercury will retire @DianaTaurasi's #3 jersey at halftime! https://t.co/2q8F6Lz6NT
Penny Taylor, Taurasi's wife and a Mercury legend in her own right with her own number already hanging in the rafters, spoke on her behalf during the tribute. Taurasi also got emotional reflecting on the arc of her whole run in the desert, telling the crowd she knew Phoenix was the place for her the moment she got there in 2004. Alyssa Thomas, who's spent this season chasing down some of Taurasi's own franchise marks, made clear during the buildup that nobody in that locker room is dumb enough to trash talk Dee.
“Nah, you don’t talk trash to Dee. That’s how you get her going. That’s one person you just leave alone.” Alyssa Thomas says that you would never trash talk Diana Taurasi 😂 (via @HaydenCilley) https://t.co/jPMQz3glm2
It's the kind of night that only happens once for a franchise. Taurasi didn't just play for the Mercury for 20 years — she was the organization's identity for most of that stretch, the reason Phoenix had a real basketball culture through some lean seasons and the centerpiece for the good ones. Hanging that jersey next to Penny Taylor's felt less like ceremony and more like a formality that had been building for years.