Diana Taurasi Given Icon Award at ESPYs

Chris Harrison | Jul 18, 2025

Jul 16, 2025; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Diana Taurasi on the red carpet before the ESPYS at The Dolby Theatre. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

One of the true icons of modern sports received recognition at the ESPYs on Wednesday, as Diana Taurasi was given the Icon Award, along with soccer star Alex Morgan, for her achievements and impact on the game of basketball over her long and storied career.

Taurasi is widely considered to be the greatest WNBA player of all time and is the league's all-time leading scorer. The 43-year-old retired before this season, after playing a total of 638 games for the Phoenix Mercury, the franchise that drafted her first overall back in 2004.

Her arrival transformed a Phoenix team that had gone just 8-26 the season prior; they climbed to a .500 record in DT's first season in the desert and immediately sported the leauge's second-best offense. By 2007, the Mercury would be champions for the first time, with Taurasi leading the way, averaging over 19 points a game for the league's best offensive team.

She would go on to lead the league in scoring five times, win two more titles (and two Finals MVPs), and be named league MVP in 2009. The 11-time All-Star led championship teams both as the league's leading scorer (2009) and as the league leader in assists (2014) and was named to All-WNBA First Team 10 times (and made the second team four times).

She won everywhere she went, representing the USA in the Olympics six times, taking home a gold medal each time, and she was a three-time national champion in college at UConn (with two tournament Most Outstanding Player awards to her name).

But more than anything, she impacted the game with her sheer force of personality. In the early days of the WNBA, national-level discourse often ignored the league and, when it did turns its eyes to the WNBA, it was portrayed as a league where the play style revolved around textbook fundamentals.

That was never true, but Taurasi's play was a bold statement on what women's basketball could be -- she was brash, talked tons and tons of trash, and played with real panache. Taurasi was launching deep threes off the dribble long before Steph Curry burst onto the scene at Davidson and, later, for the Golden State Warriors.

Taurasi was unapologetically herself, both on the court and in interviews. After receiving the Icon Award, she stayed true to character, declaring that she could "still drop 40 on anyone." And given that she did, in fact, drop 42 at age 41, she's probably right.

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