Diana Taurasi, an American professional basketball player, had to keep her persona clean for the majority of straight viewers, but she astonished the world by coming out as a lesbian last year.
The California native plays professional basketball for the Phoenix Mercury of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and for the Russian UMMC Ekaterinburg. Kobe Bryant, the great basketball player, gave her the nickname White Mamba.
She has won three WNBA championships (2007, 2009, 2014) and other trophies, including the WNBA Most Valuable Player Award (2009), four Olympic Gold Medals, WNBA Finals MVP Awards, and WNBA Rookie of the Year Award (2004).
She is one of just ten women to have won an Olympic gold medal, an NCAA title, and a WNBA title.
Diana Taurasi was a fantastic basketball player from the start.
Diana, Lorena Taurasi was born on June 11, 1982, in the state of California, to pro soccer goalkeeper Mario Taurasi and his mother Liliana Taurasi. She grew up with an elder sister named Jessika Taurasi in a family of four. Diana’s father, an Argentinian soccer star, was born in Italy and raised in Argentina, where he met Diana’s mother, Liliana.
With a height of 6 inches and a weight of 163 pounds, the athletic beauty was an excellent basketball player from a young age and had a strong interest in the sport. She won the Cherry Miller Award (2000), given by the Los Angeles Times to the finest player in Southern California when she was a student at Don Antonio Lugo High School. She was also named National High School Player of the Year and Miss Basketball State Player of the Year by Parade Magazine (1999 & 2000).
She majored in Sociology at the University of Connecticut and has had a long and successful basketball career. Even in college, she got numerous awards for her basketball skills.
Diana extends her contract with the Phoenix Mercury and earns a hefty salary, according to her net worth.
Continuing her basketball greatness, she was selected by the WNBA (Phoenix Mercury) in 2004 and has been slaying her basketball career like a pro ever then. Between 2005 and 2011, she was named to five WNBA All-Star teams. She began her professional career as a member of Dynamo Moscow in the Russian League and the Turkish Championships.
She is presently a guard for the Phoenix Mercury, however, she has also played forward on occasion. In 2017, she signed a multi-year extension contract with the team, which will keep her with the team for the rest of her WNBA career. She, on the other hand, departed UMMC Ekaterinburg in Russia in December 2017 and currently plays exclusively for the Mercury.
She is projected to earn an annual salary of $500 thousand and has a net worth of $1.5 million as a well-known basketball player on both the national and international stage.
Diana Taurasi Declares Her Sexuality
There are many coming-out stories that give us hope for a more accepting world, and Diana’s is one of them.
Her coming out as a lesbian has been an encouragement to many women in athletics who are hiding behind their identities. She disclosed a hidden reality in the realm of women’s basketball in an interview with Arizona Public in 2017, stating:
Maurice must have felt so liberated when she was finally able to open up and live and play as herself.
Meet Diana Taurasi’s Wife, who is married to a former teammate of hers (Wedding Details)
But her coming-out story isn’t just about her; she married her wife Penny Taylor, and the two of them came out to the world as a lesbian. Penny Taylor is a former player with the Phoenix Mercury and is now the team’s director of player development.
She told Arizona Public that she and her wife came out as gay together and that they never kept it a secret; moreover, they didn’t want their lesbian status to be an issue in the future.
Taurasi and Taylor married in 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona, with Taurasi wearing a white suit and Taylor wearing a lovely sweetheart neckline gown.
In an interview with PEOPLE, Diana gushed about her beautiful wedding ceremony, saying:
It had to be a lovely moment for the pair to be able to publicly embrace one other!
Wife of Diana Taurasi Gives Birth To A Baby Boy
Taurice and Taylor are also the proud parents of a baby boy named Leo Michael Taurasi-Taylor, who was born in March of 2018. Diana told USA Today that having a child has transformed her outlook on life and that she is learning and loving being a parent.
It’s wonderful to watch Taurasi’s love life and marriage blossoming without boundaries, after all, love is love!