MARK BRODIE: In honor of the WNBA\u2019s 25th anniversary season in 2021, the league asked fans to name the GOAT \u2014 the greatest of all time. The winner, Diana Taurasi of the Phoenix Mercury. For a lot of fans and watchers of women\u2019s basketball, the honor wasn\u2019t much of a surprise.<\/p>\n
[CLIPS OF MULTIPLE PEOPLE TALKING]<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s the best to ever do it, ever.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was like, \u2018I\u2019m just gonna win no matter what it takes.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest moments are her best moments.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s D\u2019s superpower.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s from the trailer for a new three part series called “Taurasi.” It\u2019s currently streaming on Prime Video. By way of a quick recap, Taurasi played 20 seasons in the WNBA, all of them in Phoenix. She retired as the league\u2019s all-time leading scorer. She was the top overall pick in the 2004 draft after winning three straight NCAA titles at UConn.<\/p>\n
She has won WNBA championships, Olympic gold medals, MVPs and a bunch of other titles and awards \u2014 but the series doesn\u2019t necessarily focus on all of that. Katie Bender Wynn, a filmmaker and (the documentary\u2019s) director, says she wanted to tell a more character driven story.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
KATIE BENDER WYNN: I hadn\u2019t heard of Diana Taurasi before, actually. Growing up as an athlete in Australia, the WNBA wasn\u2019t on our screens, so I didn\u2019t really know a lot about her. And I did some Googling, and obviously her Wikipedia page is so long, you know, full of accolades. But then there\u2019s obviously some interesting points that came up.<\/p>\n
One of them, obviously, she\u2019d been known to be villainized, and another one was that she was a sh-t talker. And so for someone who wasn\u2019t aware of this world, I didn\u2019t really understand the meaning behind it. I thought it was interesting. I was, as a filmmaker, very fascinated by that and wanted to understand the meaning of why she was being labeled that. Which I think, once you get to know Diana, there are, I think, misconceptions and misunderstandings about her career.<\/p>\n
BRODIE: One of the other things that a lot of people will say about Diana Tausi is that she is kind of famously camera shy. Like she doesn\u2019t love talking, especially about herself. I wonder if it was kind of a tough sell to get her to agree to do this.<\/p>\n
BENDER WYNN: Yeah, I mean, look, I think, you know, she obviously was already willing to do this project before it had come to me. So, I think for her it was about finding the right director. And I think she was ready to open up. But it obviously was just going to take the right person.<\/p>\n
BRODIE: She has had, as you referenced, such a decorated career \u2014 from high school to college to the WNBA to the Olympics, to playing overseas. When you talked to her, what did she have to say about sort of the totality of her career and I guess all the winning and success that she had during it?<\/p>\n
BENDER WYNN: You know, that\u2019s an interesting question, because I would say the way that I began this process with her was not talking about all the accolades. Because she\u2019s won the accolades, and they\u2019re written on paper. And it\u2019s like, she\u2019s not really one to just sit down and talk about the highlights.<\/p>\n
And that was one of the things she said to me. She didn\u2019t want this to be a highlights reel. The part that I really had to dig deep to get from her was all the moments that we don\u2019t see in the highlights, that we don\u2019t see in those media interviews after a game or at the Olympics. And that was like, what happens behind the scenes? What happens in those low moments? How did that affect her? How did she feel?<\/p>\n
BRODIE: How similar or dissimilar is the Diana Taurasi off the court to the Diana Taurasi that so many of us have seen on the court?<\/p>\n
BENDER WYNN: I laugh at that because obviously when I saw some of these videos of her screaming at refs and getting pissed off, I was naturally terrified. But when I was with her, it was all laughs. We got along great. And I think getting to know her as a person first as opposed to having this preconception of her career over the last 20 years, I think that helped.<\/p>\n
I think that did help a lot, because I just got to know the other side of her.<\/p>\n
BRODIE: Did she talk about pressure in terms of needing to be the best or feeling like others were depending on her or her teammates were depending on her? Like, I would just think that if you are labeled the greatest of all time in anything, that\u2019s gotta come with some expectations and some amount of pressure, right?<\/p>\n
BENDER WYNN: Yeah. Look, I think in her closing statements in episode three, in the very end, she says that she\u2019s ready to not fight anymore. There\u2019s always been this inner fight in her mind.<\/p>\n
And what she means by that is the pressure of leading a team, the pressure of winning. All those things that she has held as one of the greats, she was ready to let go of that. And I found that line really, really powerful.<\/p>\n
BRODIE: Did she say what led her to that? Like, what led her to sort of be ready to let go?<\/p>\n
BENDER WYNN: You know, it\u2019s funny. I mean, obviously she was 42, and playing the way she is playing is, you know, you\u2019re at the end of your basketball career. That\u2019s when your body\u2019s starting to slow down. And for her, I think that she had come to a place in her mind where she was ready to have coffee with her wife and take her kids to preschool.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t want to be traveling and leaving her family. I think she was ready for a long time. It was just more about, like, at what point was the right time for her. And I do wonder if she was waiting out to go to that sixth Olympics.<\/p>\n
BRODIE: How does she look at her time in the wnba, especially because it ended at such an interesting time when the league was \u2014 it had been popular with her in it, obviously. But it really seemed to take off to a new level with Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and now Paige Bueckers coming up. I wonder what she had to say about her role sort of helping build up the WNBA and then leaving it seemingly as it\u2019s almost going to another level.<\/p>\n
BENDER WYNN: I mean, that\u2019s crazy. It\u2019s almost poetic in a way. I think what a lot of people don\u2019t understand, which I hope this doc is the vehicle for other people to now know that if it wasn\u2019t for Diana carrying the league through a really rough time, there probably wouldn\u2019t be a league right now.<\/p>\n
And she truly is a game changer. And all the sacrifices that she took in those years where the league was shaky is, you know, why we are where we are today.<\/p>\n
BRODIE: After having gotten to know her like you have and talking to her as much as you did, what do you think is Diana Taurasi\u2019s legacy \u2014 not just in the WNBA, but in women\u2019s basketball broadly and maybe even in women\u2019s sports more broadly than that?<\/p>\n
BENDER WYNN: Yeah. I think that a big part of Diana\u2019s legacy is that we grew up in a generation in women\u2019s sports where everyone just tried to fit the mold. We grew up in a generation where society wanted or expected female athletes to look and act a certain way. And Diana didn\u2019t fit that mold, but she didn\u2019t conform to that mold.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s why I admire her so much. Because especially in a world now where society and athletes are like craving authenticity. And the way we\u2019re marketing things now is to be true to yourself. She was that her entire career. And I think in that generation not a lot of female athletes were doing that, because they were just saying yes to anything that came along just to try to get their name out there, because that\u2019s what you did, right?<\/p>\n
But she was OK with saying no because at the end of the day, she was the best baller in the world, and she knew her worth. And so the power of no I think now resonates so powerfully. And I think that you\u2019re educated with that part of her story after watching this doc.<\/p>\n
And I hope that \u2014 and I know that actually \u2014 some of the current athletes in the WNBA are already thanking her for doing that and are recognizing that. So I think that\u2019s a big part of her legacy.<\/p>\n
KJZZ’s The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ’s programming is the audio record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MARK BRODIE: In honor of the WNBA\u2019s 25th anniversary season in 2021, the league asked fans to name…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-144863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}