WNBA legend and UConn basketball destroyer of worlds Diana Taurasi spoke with FanSided (and Grading on the Curve's Adam Weinrib) on behalf of Sanofi and Regeneron. For years, eczema has affected Diana both on and off the court — a challenge she has more recently begun to publicly speak about. As part of her mission to support others living with this chronic condition,Dianahas partnered with Sanofi and Regeneron to raise awareness about the realities of living with eczema and share her personal experience with Dupixent (dupilumab) as a treatment option. Visit ShowUpAD.com to learn more.Â
Diana Taurasi always seemed fated to be an icon of the collecting game, long before her WNBA championship pursuit fell into place in Year 2, fueling an eventual dynasty. Taurasi had everything collectors typically eye. No. 1 pick coming out of college, check. High visibility from March Madness, check. Conductor of her own hype train as a sharpshooting takeover artist under Geno Auriemma at UConn, check. Taurasi seemed like not only a superstar in the making, but one who would always control her own narrative. She'd have the ball in her hands. She'd have myriad opportunities to build her own myth and add value to her portfolio.
Back in those days, a Taurasi rookie card felt generationally important - and that wasn't lost on Taurasi herself. After all, while posing for those cards, she couldn't help harken back to her own collecting days, a childhood bedroom papered with cardboard heroes.
Phoenix Mercury icon Diana Taurasi was a collector before her first rookie card
"I have thousands of baseball cards in my attic at home in LA right now," Taurasi told FanSided. "I loved baseball cards. I loved everything about them. I would sort them out every month by position, then by team, then by batting average ... I would always make a new collection out of my old collection."
"When I finally got my card - my rookie card - it was a pretty special moment. Because I remembered I used to buy them on the ice cream trucks for a dollar and some Big League Chew. So it was pretty cool."
Unsurprisingly, Taurasi says her rookie card is the one she gets asked to sign most, evoking memories of the very start of her pro journey (she also gets routinely asked to sign Funko Pops, which are decidedly less evocative). Post-retirement, she's managed to reflect on her career plenty, releasing the docuseries "Taurasi" on Prime Video. But it doesn't take an on-camera interview to make her flash back to her first WNBA title, her debut photo shoot, the UConn sidelines, or even further back, to the endless sorting and re-categorizing of a baseball card collection she tried to make both whole and new every month. Every time she sees her own rookie card, she thinks back to the collection that now resides in her attic, and likely to the children who were raised on Diana Taurasi's greatness in the same way she was fueled by a similar obsession.
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