The word “legend” might be overused, but it’s the right one to describe Diana Taurasi. At 42, Taurasi is officially in her 20th WNBA season and was just named to her sixth Olympic roster, the proud owner of five gold medals (the most in US basketball history) from previous stints. So as the WNBA enjoys a massive moment of mainstream interest and popularity, few are better positioned than Taurasi to provide a little context.
“It’s a pretty important moment in not only WNBA history, but in women’s sports,” Taurasi tells SheKnows. She describes is as a “culmination,” with factors like social media, a new generation of young stars, the age of NIL in college sports (college athletes can now have sponsors and monetize their name, image, and likeness, aka NIL), and the fact that women’s basketball had already been building momentum for years. All of it is coming together to lift the league into the stratosphere, from record viewing numbers to a SKIMS campaign.
For Taurasi, it’s a time to push forward while continuing to shine a light on all the players who made this moment possible. “There are so many women that sacrifice their time, their family, their lives for for the game of basketball,” she said. “It’s really an important time for our league to make sure to [recognize] the people that have been there.”
Taurasi has been a face of the game since her days as a young phenom at UConn, which is also around the time she began struggling with a chronic health issue she now describes as “unbearable.” Taurasi has dealt with eczema for much of her life, but the symptoms that became consistent and deeply frustrating when she started college. Being in a sweaty jersey all the time — and managing the intense stress of being a student-athlete — didn’t help.
“It was something that would affect me directly, every single day,” she remembers. “Instead of focusing on the court, I was focusing on my outbreaks.”
Taurasi experienced red, itchy skin, a common symptom of moderate to severe eczema, board-certified dermatologist Dr. Anabelle Garcia tells SheKnows. The condition, which is autoimmune-based, is “characterized by intense itching,” she explains. “A lot of times that is what is most bothersome to patients, along with those dry patches, that can ooze and crack over time and become painful.” Many patients with the condition spend huge amounts of time “coping with these persistent and frustrating symptoms that can be incredibly disruptive to daily life,” Garcia adds.
Taurasi remembers trying to hide her outbreaks and attempting to treat her eczema with different options, but nothing stuck. “All throughout college, I used everything from lotions, the creams, the steroids,” she says. “It was something that I was always trying to keep under control, but I never seemed to get a handle on it.”
It wasn’t until Taurasi was into her 30s that she found a treatment that really worked. Now she uses Dupixent, a biologic medicine that targets the inflammation that occurs in eczema, called type two inflammation, Garcia explains. Patients take it via self-injection.
“For me, it’s been a success story,” says Taurasi, who’s partnered with pharmaceutical company Sanofi and Regeneron to promote Dupixent. “It’s just part of my everyday life now. It’s part of me not only feeling good about myself, but having clear skin and being able to be confident going into my workplace.”
That’s good news for those of us ready to watch Taurasi lead Team USA at the Paris Olympics this summer, where she’ll need all the confidence she can get to uphold an iconic legacy. The US women’s basketball team has won seven consecutive gold medals and hasn’t lost a game in the Olympics since 1992. It’s an incredible streak to uphold, but Taurasi brushes off the idea of feeling pressure. “We just have so much respect for the whole world that I don’t think we feel any pressure,” she explains. “The only pressure you have is to show up and do it the right way.”
Still, the expectation is clear. “There’s always one goal,” Taurasi says, “and that’s to win a gold medal.”
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