Why Diana Taurasi is working so hard to stay on court this season and beyond

PHOENIX — Diana Taurasi made her way through the empty weight room, free of distractions, free of conversation, free of noise. It was after 4:30 p.m., and Taurasi was in her fourth hour of training for the day. Inside the Phoenix Mercury‘s practice facility after wrapping up an hourlong scrimmage, she bent her knees and swung a kettlebell down through her legs and back up, again and again. Taurasi’s face remained blank aside from the intention behind her eyes.

Her teammates had all scattered. DJ Quik’s “Bombudd II” calmed the air as Taurasi continued getting herself ready to do the only thing she has ever done at least one more time: Her 19th WNBA training camp was days away, but Taurasi has been at it like this for months.

“Everything I do my whole life is to make sure I can be on the court,” Taurasi told ESPN. “And it’s exhausting.”

But, the 40-year-old said, it’s necessary.

“I think that’s probably the biggest thing to committing to playing during the summer,” Taurasi added. “It’s really committing to play for nine months. I’m not going to play without all this. I just know how much work you have to put in to be at a certain level, and if you don’t, it’s going to show.”

Mercury coach Vanessa Nygaard simplified it: “Time’s undefeated.”

And so the player who used to close down bars and clubs early in her pro career is now closing weight rooms. It’s the new reality for Taurasi, who knows that tuning her body from head to toe daily is what it’ll take for her to not just get on the court, but stay there. Just as she retooled herself once before to become the player WNBA fans voted as the league’s greatest of all time, the hours now spent in the training room, weight room and hot tub and on the court — and knowing when to rest — will keep her playing as a quadragenarian after battling injuries each of the past four seasons.

“At this point,” Taurasi said, “if I half-ass it, it’s not going to look pretty nor will I feel good about it, and I’m just selling myself short and my teammates short.”

TAURASI’S JOURNEY TO Friday, when the Mercury open the season at the Los Angeles Sparks, began in January after her family’s annual trip to Australia to see wife Penny Taylor’s side of the family.

In December, Taurasi was finally able to return to the gym after a quad injury suffered toward the end of a roller-coaster 2022 season had completely healed. Once Taurasi was…