Kelsey Plum decided that she wanted to be a basketball player when she was 9 years old. Sitting on the couch at home in California, watching Tennessee play the University of Connecticut back in 2004, she saw Diana Taurasi, and she knew that was who she wanted to be. Plum made it happen. Two decades later, she is now on the national team with Taurasi, whose career has stretched long enough to see her play alongside women who watched her when they were little girls.
Taurasi has become one of the WNBA’s defining players. Now in her 20th season, she’s its all-time leading scorer, a three-time champion and 14-time selection for All-WNBA. During last weekend’s All-Star Game, reminders of her legacy were everywhere. The festivities were held in Phoenix, the city in which she has spent her entire career, and they functioned as a send-off for the Olympics, where she will compete for her sixth consecutive gold medal. As the league used the weekend as a celebration of its recent, significant growth, it was hard not to think of the player who has been there longer than anyone else. Taurasi has seen the WNBA through years of growing pains into what is now, finally, a record boom.
