Taurasi Travails Both Gave Him The Peace
It 'impossible to watch Diana Taurasi, the WNBA's best player, probably the best player in the world of women, and the well-known through television. Few women - heck, a few men - to play what looks like a strong, pulsed light beams across the court.
It is also impossible to Diana Taurasi to extinguish his fervor. There is no switch, nothing to trip your mind, saying that basketball is finished for the day and it is time to resolve. In contrast, the beat goes on. Was it a good practice? Is it productive? Is there a future production?
"We think 24 hours a day," he says. "I feel like Bobby Fischer, a bit '."
For those who scoff at the WNBA, the league who think that starts its season on Friday, 15 not the severity of the NBA, perhaps never saw the custody of the Phoenix Mercury, never seen his support for a night, hull in the way of scoring basket after basket when his team most needed.
Every day there is someone to swing - a coach, teammate, opponent - even after they have all recognized that it is probably the best ever. Their confirmations are not sufficient. She must show them, see, tell them 20 extra minutes of lifting weights, hitting jump additional operation was worth it, somehow, that today it is him or someone better. Slowdown is so difficult.
But this winter, she had to stop. The Turkish team, where she played last winter fell on her after she tested positive for a mild stimulant called modafinil. She firmly denied these allegations, even taking a polygraph test to determine his innocence. His protests were so strong that Mercury, general manager Ann Meyers Drysdale, (which was one of Taurasi's day), thought that his game the same. Maybe some of the intensity Taurasi is the fact that she never lied to the team in the past, and it seemed hard to believe she is now.
Only after Taurasi returned to the United States that the word out: the testing company had made a mistake. There were no positive results. It was not a stimulant. As if she needed something more to bring the field. This week, the World Anti-Doping Agency has suspended the accreditation for the testing company for six months, provided validation Taurasi was telling the truth than anything.
But his exile from the Turkish team also provides an advantage strange, but pleasant. They took her to relax.
She never had time away from basketball before. When playing at the University of Connecticut, there were always teams were national teams, the tournaments to play. His first four years of the WNBA, played league season summer-autumn in the U.S., then go to Russia to play professionally in the winter and spring. Add the Olympics and world championships and was exhausted.
Meyers-Drysdale remembers former coach Geno Auriemma College Taurasi, who also coached the national team last summer, complaining in the World Championship Taurasi was there in body but his spirit has been drained. To miss the rest of the season in Turkey, Taurasi could rest.
"Actually, I'm not in his favor," says Meyers-Drysdale.
The director stops to consider the idea, then adds: "You know that he has never been healthier, because it was the WNBA?"
Now she is.
Where to go when you have won nine championships between the college, the WNBA and abroad? You have to drive.
"For me it's like Bill Russell, support you," said Meyers-Drysdale.
Taurasi was the time not like the attention. That came early in Connecticut, one of the few places where women's basketball players are decorated with the kind of success most men, even a great school to college basketball are not. Interviews continue to arrive. Day after day. The words are repeated in his mind. He began to dream that is doing the interviews, he sat on the bed, tying the knot of his hair - as he often did when speaking to the media - and ready to attack the questions until he realized that it was night and there was no interview and that he could go back to sleep.
Eventually, he was born and came to check college women's basketball. Twice he was the college player of the year and has led UConn to three national titles. For seven years he was particularly given the WNBA, its best player, who produces a few lights on the night raids, which was sent up to five games two minutes, attack, attack, attack until the end, winning in Phoenix.
This has become an MVP. He has won two titles with mercury. This left Auriemma to laugh at the stupidity of the question when asked in the army of stars who have played for him was the best. Taurasi.
But there was a price, a heavy, when he was arrested in 2009 and charged by police in Phoenix "extreme DUI" after having tested 0.17 BAC, over twice the legal limit. Later, he pleaded guilty to drunk driving and served a day in jail. Smaller player in the league would probably avoid the public shame, but arrests are rare because it Taurasi won WNBA and best player in the league, the words "extreme DUI" buzzing around the news wires. It 'was an embarrassment for the league is trying hard to grow.
Yet it was something else too.
"She woke up," said Meyers-Drysdale. "She has a positive effect. He turned to his life."
Asked what that meant, Meyers_Drysdale replies: "He has his life back as he lived out of the game .."
Taurasi much has happened in the last two years. In addition to the DUI and the question of Turkey, there was also a 2009 murder Shabtai Kalmanovitch, owner of the Russian team Spartak Moscow, who played four years the WNBA season was over. It was a very family Kalmanovitch, Meyers-Drysdale said.
Suddenly Taurasi, who stands so little adversity, that everything was easy and the result was enough leeway given in turn, was forced to grow up a bit. It is never easy. But she began to find peace in simple things. When she had driven home from practice to sit on the couch and text, and tweet and email as many friends as possible around him with a big cocoon invisible, but faces safely. Since his arrest and stimulation test, she puts the phone and remote computer, ignore social media she ever dreamed.
Last year she posed nude on the cover of a national sports magazine. She did not. He had to give up much control. His agent asked him four times before she accepted and even then it was because the officer said it would be a good thing to do so. Only after the magazine came out and saw the pictures she was glad she did the photo shoot.
"As I got more I learned to relax a little more," he said, insisting it is serious. "I can sit on the couch now and read a magazine or s' to sit on the sofa and a cup of coffee."
Which is more or less as the best player in the WNBA may be able to let go.
