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Diana Taurasi Once Brutally Roasted Draymond Green During 2016 Olympics

In a story revealed alongside Taurasi's retirement on Tuesday, the all-time great savaged Green with a one-liner during the Rio Olympics.

Liam McKeone

Diana Taurasi won six gold medals for Team USA during her illustrious career.
Diana Taurasi won six gold medals for Team USA during her illustrious career. / James Lang-Imagn Images
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On Tuesday night the women's basketball world changed forever as longtime superstar Diana Taurasi announced her retirement via an interview with TIME magazine. Taurasi's illustrious career spanned 20 seasons and there's tons to unpack surrounding her legacy and impact on the game of women's basketball.

The retirement of an all-time great athlete is also when never-before-heard stories tend to rise to the surface. Like, say, Taurasi brutally roasting Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green in the midst of his franchise's dynastic run.

Back in 2016 for the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the men's and women's basketball teams stayed on a cruise ship together. According to the TIME story in which Taurasi announced her decision to hang 'em up, players from both teams were sitting around one evening talking trash and Taurasi broke out the big guns for Green.

"Draymond Green, a noted NBA rabble-rouser known more for his defensive instincts, physicality, passing skills, and penchant for drawing technical fouls and suspensions than his shooting and scoring ability, was going on about something," wrote TIME's Sean Gregory. "Taurasi said, ‘Hey, Draymond, how does it feel to be the only person in this room who’s never been double-teamed?'"

Woof. Roasted.

If the stats and accolades didn't back up Taurasi's status as an all-time great in the sport of basketball, stories like these certainly do.

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Liam McKeone
LIAM MCKEONE

Liam McKeone is a senior writer for the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He has been in the industry as a content creator since 2017, and prior to joining SI in May 2024, McKeone worked for NBC Sports Boston and The Big Lead. In addition to his work as a writer, he has hosted the Press Pass Podcast covering sports media and The Big Stream covering pop culture. A graduate of Fordham University, he is always up for a good debate and enjoys loudly arguing about sports, rap music, books and video games. McKeone has been a member of the National Sports Media Association since 2020.

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