Lusia Harris, the one lady to be formally drafted by an NBA group and scored the primary factors in ladies's basketball historical past on the Olympics, died on the age of 66.
AP
Lusia Harris, who grew to become the one lady to be formally drafted by an NBA group and scored the primary factors in ladies’s basketball historical past on the Olympics, died Tuesday, her household introduced. 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 right now in Mississippi,” the household mentioned in a press release. “The current months introduced Ms. Harris nice pleasure, together with the information of the upcoming wedding ceremony of her youngest son and the outpouring of recognition acquired by a current documentary that introduced worldwide consideration to her story.”
Harris, who died in her native Mississippi, was drafted by the New Orleans Jazz within the seventh spherical in 1977, however didn’t check out for the group as a result of she was pregnant on the time. The San Francisco Warriors tried to draft Denise Lengthy in 1969, however the NBA blocked it as a result of she didn’t meet the standards to be drafted — partly due to her gender.
Harris helped Delta State College win three straight nationwide titles within the 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 as the primary Black lady to earn that honor. She was later enshrined into the Ladies’s Basketball Corridor of Fame in 1999.
“She will likely be remembered for her charity, for her achievements each on and off the court docket, and the sunshine she delivered to 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 all over the world,” the assertion mentioned.
Harris averaged 25.9 factors and 14.4 rebounds at Delta State, lifting the group to a 109-6 file throughout her time there. She’s nonetheless the varsity’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 recreation of the event.
She was the topic of a 2021 brief movie titled “The Queen of Basketball” that detailed her profession.
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