Phoenix Mercury Women

Three championships came in a five-year stretch, and each one arrived a different way. In 2007 the Mercury beat the Detroit Shock 3–2, with Cappie Pondexter named Finals MVP. The 2014 title needed no deciding game at all: a 3–0 sweep of the Chicago Sky.

Taurasi has been the constant across all of it. Drafted first overall in 2004, she was still on the roster a decade later when Brittney Griner, the top pick of 2013, became a key part of the championship run. Penny Taylor won all three titles with the club, and Candice Dupree spent two separate stints in Phoenix, from 2010 to 2015 and again from 2020 to 2023.

Not every trip to the Finals ended in a trophy. The Mercury lost their first one in 1998, to the Houston Comets, and their most recent, in 2021, to the Chicago Sky — the two bookends of a run that has otherwise been defined by winning it all.

The rivalry with the Los Angeles Sparks is billed as Hollywood against the Valley, and the one with the Seattle Storm ranks among the WNBA's most storied. The Las Vegas Aces have become the newer test, a Western Conference matchup with the standings on the line rather than history.

The team plays purple and orange against black and white, colours that have outlasted five different names for the arena they call home. The Mercury enter the current season still built around finding a way past the Aces and back to the Finals they last reached in 2021.