I suppose this is Part 2 of the “prominent athletes I’ve dealt with semi-recently who are in some serious trouble” part of the blog. First Jeremy Mayfield, below. Now Diana Taurasi. Perhaps the greatest female basketball player in history.

I first saw Taurasi play when she was a senior in high school at Don Lugo HS in Chino, in the spring of 2000. She already was doing the Magic Johnson thing, more interested in the spectacular pass than in scoring, and if you didn’t arrive already knowing (as I did) that she could score just about whenever she wanted, you might be vaguely disappointed. She didn’t shoot that much (unless a three-pointer interested her) and, indeed, her scoring was off from earlier years in high school. But that was because she didn’t have to score. She got so much attention from everyone’s defense that she pretty much could pick out which teammate would get a layup, and that had turned into her fun. Just remarkable court-sense and vision. Like nothing I have seen in the women’s game, before or since.

After Don Lugo, she went to Connecticut and won three NCAA women’s basketball titles, then was the No. 1 pick in the 2004 WNBA draft. And did all sorts of marvelous things right up until July 2, when she was busted for “extreme” driving under the influence in Phoenix a few hours after scoring 22 points for the Phoenix Mercury.

This is bad. Very. Not only is Taurasi one of the primary faces in the league … there is a chance she could go to jail.

Here is the latest version of events. She actually faces three charges here.

The most alarming/dangerous is the extreme DUI charge. Local police have her blood alcohol level at .17 — more than twice the legal limit. Which means she was seriously hammered, according to the authorities.

Not exactly the warm-and-fuzzy kind of responsible citizen/trailblazing woman thing the WNBA likes to espouse.

I wonder if she is drinking because she is bored. Really. I do.

She set the WNBA scoring record in 2006, scoring 860 points in 34 games. I drove over to Phoenix to see the game where she broke the record and she was pretty blase about it — considering she eventually broke the record by more than 100 points. She also has a share of the WNBA single-game scoring record, 47 points.

She has been an All-Star Game automatic since she entered the league. And she got a WNBA championship last season. She also has two Olympic gold medals. And don’t forget she has played in Russia the last several winters, earning more money there than she does in the WNBA. And winning a championship there, too.

In 2007, former colleague Clay Fowler and I drove over to Phoenix in the height of summer to do a “best women’s player ever?” package.  Taurasi was pleasant, but a bit guarded. With the sort of canned patter that comes with being interviewed time and again for most of your adult life. Almost as if she were a bit jaded by it all. “Yes, I’ve been playing this game forever … but no, you’re not going to get me to say I’m the best ever.” Actually, it struck me rather like doing an interview with an NBA player. One not particularly bright or inquisitive. All basketball all the time.

And we decided, yes, she was the greatest women’s player ever. Even if she didn’t say it and her GM, Ann Meyers Drysdale, seemed leery about saying it, either.

And now I wonder if Taurasi has just run out of challenges. Does she have any hobbies? Not that I’ve heard of. In hoops, which has gotten almost all her time since she was a little kid, she has done everything there is to do. At age 27. Imagine Michael Jordan as the best player at every level he ever played — and remember, he didn’t start as a freshman at North Carolina — and winning everything there is to win … at age 27 … and maybe he would have retired a lot sooner than he did. (The first time.)

Also, Taurasi’s time in Russia probably didn’t make her less likely to tipple seriously, at the end of a work  day. So, score your 22, hand out a batch of assists, get as many rebounds as you feel like getting (ho hum) … and now go get hammered. At least according to tests the police are running (and Taurasi apparently will contest).

She has been suspended for two games by her team, which is a big deal in such a short season, and the semi-official Voice of the WNBA, Mechelle Voepel of espn.com is calling for even more serious punishment — as well as banishment from this year’s all-star game, which is going to be played in, oops, Connecticut.

In a weird way, maybe this indicates progress for the WNBA: It has a great player in trouble with the law for partying too hard.

Hey, that’s like the guys in the NBA do it!

But, no, that’s not a real victory. Because the WNBA markets itself as the sober and intelligent form of professional basketball, and one of its marquee players stands accused of being anything but sober or intelligent, if she was indeed that drunk while speeding down a street.

Also, the WNBA is hanging by a thread. The idea of women’s professional basketball has never caught on, and the league is losing teams — as well as its official connections to NBA franchises. (The NBA has been propping up the WNBA all along.) The Lakers dumped the Sparks, etc.

Lisa Leslie will retire after this season, the Houston Comets are gone, many of the WNBA’s best players are more interested in the European winter leagues than they are in the WNBA … and now Diana Taurasi, with her socks pulled up to her knees and her hair in that severe bun, the woman who makes passes that Magic would admire … is in trouble.

She always has been a trailblazer. But this is one aspect of breaking new ground that she could have, and should have, done without.