By any measure, Diana Taurasi is one of the best basketball players of all-time. After a ridiculously impressive college career at UConn, Taurasi took her talents to the professional ranks and, over the course of more than a decade with the Phoenix Mercury, she has amassed three WNBA titles, nine All-WNBA nods and a WNBA MVP award.
While there is virtually nothing that Taurasi hasn’t been able to accomplish, on Tuesday evening, the hoops legend extended a streak that is almost unfathomable. Entering the night, Taurasi sported a spotless 11-0 record in winner-take-all games since entering the WNBA and, on the heels of yet another dominant performance, she extended that streak to 12 consecutive victories in high-stakes games with a 101-83 win over Dallas.
Taurasi’s performance was the catalyst in allowing the Mercury to move on to the second round (and a date with Connecticut on Thursday) and her 12-0 mark with her team’s back against the wall is, unsurprisingly, the best in WNBA history. In addition, her 26-point, 12-assist showing in this particular spot also happened to make more history, as she became the first WNBA player to exceed 20 points, 10 assists and five made three-pointers (she made six) in a playoff setting.
In typical Taurasi fashion, there was very little she didn’t display over the course of the victory but her passing was particularly memorable.
“It’s not just scoring,” Mercury head coach Sandy Brondello told ESPN. “She can score, we know that. She’s one of the greatest scorers to ever play the game. But just the vision and making the right passes. She had 12 [assists] tonight, but the two games before that she had 14 assists, as well as shooting 20-plus points. That’s pretty impressive for someone at 36 years of age and the amount of minutes I’ve played her all season long. She has to be right up there for the MVP, in my opinion.”
In 33 games this season, Taurasi averaged 20.7 points and 5.3 assists per game while also converting 38.3 percent of her threes on 8.4 attempts from distance per game. It is very clear that she operates at a different level than the vast majority of WNBA players in history but, again in this spot, Taurasi seemed to leave an impression that went even beyond her incredible box score numbers.
The Mercury will face a tough Connecticut squad in the next round and the WNBA Playoffs feature a number of teams that are capable of knocking Phoenix out of the tournament. With that said, history shows that your team has a real advantage when Diana Taurasi is on the floor in big games, so while the road is tough, the Mercury can take solace in knowing they have the WNBA’s greatest trump card.
