Diana Taurasi wants to buy the place. Two days before the Phoenix Mercury raise her No. 3 to the rafters, the reporting out of Phoenix has Taurasi saying she hopes to join the Mercury's ownership group in the next year or two. Not a ceremonial handshake, not an ambassador title. Equity. Diana Taurasi Mercury ownership is a sentence that reads like the natural end of a story that started in 2004, and honestly, it should have surprised nobody.
Start with what the jersey means. Phoenix took her first overall out of UConn in 2004, and she never wore another WNBA uniform. Twenty seasons, one franchise. Rookie of the Year, then MVP in 2009, then titles in 2007, 2009 and 2014, then the first player in league history to cross 10,000 career points, plus six Olympic golds stacked up on the side. Franchises spend decades looking for one player who defines them. Phoenix found theirs in the first pick she ever heard called.
What makes the ownership line more than nostalgia is timing. The league is in the middle of the largest expansion and valuation run it has ever had, with new markets coming online and franchise prices that would have sounded like a typo ten years ago. Getting in now is not a retirement hobby. It is a real check, and it puts a former player in the room where scheduling, facilities, travel and roster spending actually get decided. She spent twenty years being the person those decisions happened to.
checked the almanac: renee montgomery joined the atlanta dream's ownership group in 2021, the first former wnba player to become both an owner and an executive of a franchise. it took the league 25 seasons to get there once. the second time should be easier.
The Mercury sit under the same umbrella as the Suns, so any move here runs through a big, well capitalized group, which is both the obstacle and the opportunity. Those rooms are expensive. They also do not usually come with someone who can tell you exactly what a back-to-back in August does to a rotation.
What comes next is the ceremony, and then the interesting part. The banner is the easy piece. The paperwork is the one worth watching, and whether Phoenix hands a legend a seat or a title.