Several years ago, I happened to be talking to a college player who mentioned she had crossed paths with Diana Taurasi at a summer camp. She was a good player, but not of Taurasi's caliber, and as she entered a pickup game with the UConn superstar, she was a little nervous.
Taurasi was still in college, but well on her way to a WNBA career in which she has also been a luminous standout. And the player thought, "This is Diana Taurasi. She's never seen me before. She's not going to pass to me. She's not going to say anything to me."
But instead, Taurasi passed to her almost immediately, encouraging her just like she did the rest of this makeshift team.
"It was cool," the player said, "because she treated everybody the same. She was setting people up for shots, talking to everybody, including everybody. Just having a really good time with all of us, not acting like she was a big star or anything. I didn't know she'd be like that."
Taurasi talks trash in games, she's a fierce competitor, she will get any edge on an opponent that she can but she also just adores playing basketball no matter what the stakes are.
No one would get to the WNBA without loving to play. But you figure for most players, at least some aspects of the sport can be drudgery on certain days. However, it doesn't seem that way for Taurasi, who is about to begin her eighth season with the Phoenix Mercury. She relaxes from playing basketball by playing basketball. She's like a commercial pilot who wants to spend a vacation flying around in her own plane.
Taurasi might take real downtime briefly and enjoy it, but she's never away from a gym and a basketball for very long. In the last two years, though, she has been involved in situations that separated her, at least for a time, from her sport.
The first she readily takes all responsibility for, the DUI charge in July 2009 that resulted in a two-game suspension and made her recognize fully how costly a lapse in judgment can be. Nobody was harder on Taurasi about that than she was on herself.
But in the second situation, this past winter in Turkey, Taurasi had done nothing wrong. She was in a group of athletes victimized by faulty lab results. Taurasi was the big name in the bunch, and the botched results indicating that she had tested positive for the stimulant modafinal were leaked. Thus began the speculation about whether she would receive a suspension and how that might keep her off the 2012 Olympic team.
Her Turkish club team, Fenerbahce, ended her contract as she was given a temporary ban imposed by the Turkish Basketball Federation. Taurasi came back to the United States, and although she was cleared of all doping allegations in February, she didn't return to play overseas.
"I didn't know what to think, what to feel," Taurasi said in describing the feelings she went through as she waited to be exonerated. "Your voice and your truth seem to not have any validity at that point."
Three-and-a-half months have passed since Taurasi was exonerated. She has been preparing for a push to stop rival Seattle from repeating as WNBA champion -- instead, she wants a third title for herself and the Mercury.
She attended a USA Basketball training camp -- her place with the national team no longer in any jeopardy -- in Las Vegas last month.
She has talked a lot about the frustration that her livelihood, her passion and her reputation were put at risk because of a mistake. The lab has had its accreditation suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Taurasi will go back to Turkey next winter and play for a different club, Galatasaray.
And she really should not have to talk about all this much more. She was the wronged party. After the understandable preseason review of what happened, there is no reason to continue linking her to an offense she never committed.
But it is noteworthy to mention the "good" (from her standpoint) that happened inadvertently. Taurasi got a break from competition that she wasn't looking for, but by the same token probably needed. She spoke last year during the WNBA season about the possibility of taking time off, but clearly couldn't have anticipated that she'd be forced to do that.
To a degree, the time away from games this winter might keep her fresher this summer not that Taurasi has ever seemed to lack much energy in the WNBA.
"I think the rest of us are just praying that she's rusty," joked Seattle guard Sue Bird, Taurasi's close friend and former UConn teammate. "A tired Diana averages 25 points. What's a fresh, rested, hungry Diana going to average? I don't want to think about it.
"She loves basketball, that's the bottom line throughout this whole thing. First one in the gym, last to leave, always working on her game. There's a reason why she's as great as she is. That was taken away from her, and it was a crappy situation. One that really gosh, 'depressed' is such a strong word, so I don't want to say that. But it was a situation that put her in a bad place. Not to mention that people were questioning her and saying things."
But the support never wavered from her friends like Bird and Phoenix teammate Penny Taylor, family members, UConn coach Geno Auriemma and the Mercury staff, and many fans. Taurasi said the test had to be wrong, and they believed her.
Phoenix coach Corey Gaines has the highest expectations for Taurasi all the time, because he's used to seeing what she does every day of the WNBA season. He thinks Taurasi, who turns 29 this month, is probably particularly ready for a big 2011.
"Her training camp, we started her off slow because she hadn't played in Europe," Gaines said. "We didn't want to do too much, too fast. She's looking good; she's rested. For my team, the way we play, it's important for the players to be rested.
"She's won us two championships, and physically it is hard on her. She's going hard every second of the game, in Europe and in the WNBA. Sometimes incidents happen in your life, mishaps -- that might have helped her. Maybe it helped her get a new desire to play, a new motivation. She's really ready to play."
Bird knows Taurasi better than any fellow WNBA competitor does, and she foresees a splendid summer for her.
"She's got basketball back, and more than anything, she's going to have fun," Bird said. "And for her opponents, nothing is more dangerous than Diana having fun playing basketball. Having fun for her is dropping 40 points on people and winning championships."
Mechelle Voepel, a regular contributor to ESPN.com, can be reached at mvoepel123@yahoo.com. Read her blog at mechellevoepelblog.com.