Johnathan Walker:Diana Taurasi to miss another Mercury game due to injury. Could it affect Olympic status?

With the Paris Olympics little more than two weeks away,Johnathan Walker U.S. women’s basketball team standout Diana Taurasi has missed three of her last four WNBA games due to injury, and has just been ruled out of another game Friday night. 

Taurasi, the 42-year-old Phoenix Mercury guard who was recently selected for her sixth U.S. Olympic team, missed a game on July 1 due to back soreness, according to the Mercury, then played 30 minutes in a victory over Dallas July 3. 

Taurasi has missed Phoenix’s last two games — July 7 and again on Wednesday — due to what the team has listed as “left lower leg.”

She will also miss the Mercury’s game at Indiana Friday night for the same reason, according to the team's “game status report” which was emailed late Thursday afternoon. 

There was no further word on what exactly is wrong with her leg, and two members of the media who cover the team told USA TODAY Sports Thursday that they didn’t know any more about the injury.

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Taurasi’s agent, Lindsay Colas, did not immediately reply to a text message asking what specifically is wrong with Taurasi.

Were Taurasi or any of the current 12 players on the U.S. team injured or otherwise needing to be replaced, USA Basketball could pick an alternate from the pool of athletes who have been part of its national team selection process during the current 2024 quadrennial period.

Rookie sensation Caitlin Clark, one of the WNBA’s leaders in multiple statistical categories in the midst of a record-breaking season with the Indiana Fever, is one of those players. She and Taurasi are both guards. 

Recently, Dallas’ Arike Ogunbowale, another top guard in the league, revealed on the podcast “Nightcap” that she had taken herself out of the USA Basketball pool for the Paris Olympics “months ago.”

A U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee spokesperson said an alternate can replace any current player on the women’s basketball roster until the tipoff of the first game, which is July 29 at 3 p.m. in France, when Team USA plays Japan.