Taurasi played her final game for the Mercury on Sept. 25 — Phoenix lost to the Minnesota Lynx 101-88 in the first round of the playoffs. She didn't comment on whether she would return at the time and left many fans wondering “if this is it," the exact verbiage the Mercury used to advertise the team's final regular-season home games.

Diana Taurasi was cagey about what’s next, now that she’s retired from the WNBA. “That’s a tough question,” she said at the Mercury’s practice facility near downtown Phoenix on Thursday afternoon.

Days after she officially announced the end of her 20-year professional basketball career, Diana Taurasi had just boarded a flight from Phoenix to New York with her wife Penny Taylor and two children when her 7-year-old son Leo turned to her and asked earnestly,