Mohegan — On the night your team’s season ends, you want to be some combination of angry, annoyed and perhaps apoplectic. Blame assessment before anything else. Lament all the wouldas, shouldas and couldas that come with the frustrating feeling of finito.

And yet there was a reason that many in the in-full-throat crowd of 7,858 at Mohegan Sun Arena on Thursday night gave the Sun an ovation as they left their home floor for the final time. They had just watched phenomenal Phoenix waltz out of Neon Uncasville with a gloriously entertaining 96-86 win, but knew something else:

The Sun played a damn fine game. They just had the misfortune of playing the team with Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner.

“I thought both teams played outstanding basketball,” Sun coach Curt Miller said. “Low turnovers, big plays, stars showing up. A truly high-level, well-played game.

“I’m really proud of our players and team. We handled adversity, the injuries, we got through a rough patch in the middle of the season. Tonight, I thought we did a ton of really, really good things. We put ourselves in a position at halftime to pull out this game. We just didn’t make the plays down the stretch.”

Taurasi, who scored 27 points, is a crisp 13-0 now in single-elimination playoff games. That alone cements her as the greatest women’s basketball player in the history of the world. Yet in a world suddenly awash in analytics, metrics and other abstractions that tug at the core of the human element, Taurasi said something about free will after the game that has no metric equivalent.

And describes the core of her greatness.

And describes why the Mercury are still playing.

And why the Sun aren’t.

“We relish these moments,” Taurasi said. “It’s really up to you whether you want to keep playing. Do you want to come back tomorrow? There was a moment there we could have easily said ‘we’re good, we’ve had our good moments, let’s go back to Phoenix and get ready for USA Basketball.’ You get to make that decision.”

Taurasi makes that decision every day. In every drill. In every game. She personifies what college coach Geno Auriemma says about being great.

“Being great means being great every day,” he says.

Taurasi’s decision is seen in a sculpted body, even at age 37. (Not everyone in the WNBA takes care of her body the way Taurasi does). Why? She made the decision. Just as she made the decision late in the game to rip a huge rebound away from bigger, longer Jonquel Jones.

Taurasi wanted to come back tomorrow.

This is a lesson Sun players are still learning.

“(Taurasi) amazes me every single day,” Phoenix coach Sandy Brondello said. “To be able to do what she continues to do at her age is amazing. … She’ll do whatever it takes to win. I don’t know if I’ve seen anyone with a will to win bigger than hers. There are no words for Diana. I think it’s the best she’s ever played.”

And then when Taurasi doesn’t have the ball, Griner, the most dominant post in the game, does. The Sun couldn’t guard her in the second half. Griner shot 8-for-12 from the field, inhaling poor Chiney Ogwumike and Jones. It’s not like they didn’t try.

“I keep reminding (Griner) that the only person who can stop you is you,” Brondello said.

And this — yes, this — is who the Sun have been sentenced to play the last two years in knockout games. Maybe one day, it’ll be wisdom for the pain. But for now, it’s called learning the hard way. Because again: The Sun played a really good game Thursday night. But needed to play great.

“This core group had a great year,” Miller said. “They’re under contract. The majority of the team is back. We think we’re building something very special. While we thought we could win it all this year, we’re going to be even hungrier as we move forward.”

Hungrier, in this case, is taking their cues from the great Taurasi.

Each individual Sun player gets to make that decision in the offseason.

They get to work on their bodies and minds to make 2019 great.

They get to make that decision.

The greatest of them all said so.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro