LeBron James and Magic Johnson taped video tributes for Diana Taurasi’s jersey retirement Sunday, and neither man tapes anything for someone who didn’t matter.
The Phoenix Mercury retired Taurasi’s No. 3 at halftime of Sunday’s game against Portland, inducting her into the franchise’s Ring of Honor in front of a sellout crowd of 16,513 at Mortgage Matchup Center. Twenty former teammates walked out one at a time, each handing her a white rose for a season she played in Phoenix. The ceremony ran about 75 minutes, building toward a closing speech from Taurasi herself.
Phoenix leaned into the nickname on purpose. There was a goat petting zoo outside the arena, actual goats, because the Mercury has been calling Taurasi the GOAT for years and finally had the budget to be literal about it. Every seat got a commemorative T-shirt, and Cheryl Miller narrated the highlight video before Val Ackerman and USA Basketball CEO Jim Tooley both spoke.
What actually opened it was a video reel: Sue Bird, Lisa Leslie, Dawn Staley, A’ja Wilson, Paige Bueckers, Breanna Stewart and Nick Van Exel, all recording messages for a woman who’s been the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer since before some of them were All-Stars. Wilson and Bueckers are the two best players in the sport right now. Neither one needed to be talked into showing up on a jumbotron for a predecessor.
That’s the actual headline from this jersey retirement, not who sat courtside.
Twenty years produced three championships, six Olympic golds, eleven All-Star selections and a scoring record nobody else in the sport has sniffed. That resume is why a video roll call carries weight instead of reading like a formality.
I’m from Phoenix, and I’ve followed the Mercury my whole life from a polite distance — never a die-hard, always aware of what Taurasi meant to that city. Even from that distance, a taped message from LeBron James lands different than a normal League Pass tribute reel. He doesn’t record one because a publicist asked nicely. He records one because the person earned it, and he knows exactly how few people do.
The people who flew in mattered plenty, too. Brittney Griner, Kahleah Copper, Bridget Pettis and Sheryl Swoopes came back as former teammates. Larry Fitzgerald brought his two sons. Devin Booker came through representing the other half of Phoenix sports, and Penny Taylor read her wife a poem in front of a sold-out arena.
Taurasi closed with a 30-minute speech that opened on her immigrant parents’ sacrifices and landed on the line that mattered most: “Once the jersey goes up there, that’s the last nail in the coffin.” She saved something warmer for the city itself.
https://x.com/espnW/status/2089148123989827882
Her No. 3 now hangs alongside Jennifer Gillom, Bridget Pettis, Penny Taylor and Michele Timms — the only other numbers the Mercury have ever retired. ESPN’s write-up of the ceremony borrowed the same words Taurasi used in her own speech: one city, one team, one jersey, because there wasn’t a better way to put it. Yahoo Sports ran the same video roll call, because there was no version of this night where it didn’t happen.
The Mercury lost by three, and nobody in that building noticed.
