Lusia Harris, affectionately nicknamed Lucy, who was a force to behold on women’s college basketball courts during the 1970s, has passed away. Harris set the record at Delta State for most career points and rebounds with 2,891 and 1662, respectively, which still haven’t been broken. The Delta State legend was selected to the Women’s Olympics Basketball team in ’76 and would become the only woman in NBA history to be drafted by an NBA team when the New Orleans Jazz selected her in the 1977 NBA Draft.
The Olympian basketball player would then be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992 and later became a part of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999 attached to the inaugural class.
Although Harris would object to the offer from the NBA team, getting the feeling that she was being used as a pawn in the greater scheme of things, she would still make history with this barrier-breaking feat. “I just thought it was a publicity stunt, and I felt like I didn’t think I was good enough,” she said during her appearance in “The Queen of Basketball,” a short film about her life, career, and importance. “So I decided not to go. Yeah, I said no to the NBA.”
May Lusia Harris rest in peace.