Lusia Harris, the one lady to be drafted by an NBA group and the primary particular person to attain a degree in ladies’s basketball for the USA within the Olympics, has died at her house in Mississippi. She was 66.
“We're deeply saddened to share the information that our angel, matriarch, sister, mom, grandmother, Olympic medalist, The Queen of Basketball, Lusia Harris has handed away unexpectedly immediately in Mississippi,” her household stated in a press release Tuesday.
“The latest months introduced Ms. Harris nice pleasure, together with the information of the upcoming wedding ceremony of her youngest son and the outpouring of recognition obtained by a latest documentary that introduced worldwide consideration to her story.”
Harris was drafted by the New Orleans Jazz within the seventh spherical in 1977, when the draft consisted of 10 rounds. There are actually solely two rounds.
However Harris by no means performed for the group as a result of she was pregnant on the time.
Eight years earlier, the San Francisco Warriors — now the Golden State Warriors — had tried to draft Denise Lengthy, however the NBA blocked it as a result of she didn’t meet the standards to be drafted — largely due to her gender.
Harris helped Delta State College win three straight nationwide titles within the Nineteen Seventies and earned a silver medal for the USA on the Montreal Olympics in 1976.
Harris was inducted into the Basketball Corridor of Fame in 1992, turning into the primary Black lady to earn that honor. She was later enshrined into the Ladies’s Basketball Corridor of Fame.
“She will likely be remembered for her charity, for her achievements each on and off the courtroom, and the sunshine she dropped at her group, the state of Mississippi, her nation as the primary lady ever to attain a basket within the Olympics, and to ladies who play basketball world wide,” the household’s assertion stated.
Harris averaged 25.9 factors and 14.4 rebounds at Delta State, lifting the group to a 109-6 document throughout her time there. She stays the college’s all-time chief in scoring (2,981 factors) and rebounding (1,662).
Harris was named to the U.S. ladies’s group in 1975. The next 12 months, ladies’s basketball made its Olympic debut and Harris scored the primary factors within the first sport of the match.
She was the topic of a 2021 brief movie, “The Queen of Basketball,” that chronicled her profession.
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