Remembering Lusia Harris-Stewart, the original women’s basketball pioneer

Image edit via Thilo Latrell Widder

Nearly 50 years ago, the NBA officially drafted a woman for the first (and only) time.

The WNBA has existed long enough for it to have its own legends. Players like Maya Moore, Diana Taurasi, Candace Parker, the list goes on and on. Personally, I am just old enough to have seen Cappie Pondexter play in the Prudential Center in Jersey for a middle school trip.

However, whenever we talk about the legends who did get the chance to play, we must also acknowledge that there were always excellent players in women’s basketball, many of whom unfortunately came too early to play in the WNBA.

The name from that group that comes to mind for everyone is Cheryl Miller. Reggie Miller’s big sister was absolutely dominant in high school, leading her team to a baffling 132-4 record and setting the record for most points in a single game with 105 against Riverside Norte Vista. If she played every single minute, that would be 2.625 points per minute. She did not. She sat for the last two minutes. That’s 2.76 points per minute. At least. That is an inconceivable number.

Unfortunately for Miller, she was about 10 years too early for the WNBA, finishing her college career in 1986. While she did have a career both on the bench as a coach and on the call as a broadcaster, it has always seemed brutally unfair that she never got that chance.

Today, however, is an important anniversary for a different women’s basketball legend. One who came even earlier, and is all too often forgotten.

On today’s date of June 10, all the way back in 1977, the New Orleans Jazz drafted Lusia Harris-Stewart. She was (and still is) the only woman officially drafted to the NBA.

Harris-Stewart grew up in a tiny Mississippi town as the 10th of 11 children of a pair of sharecroppers. While the family did not have much, they did have a basketball hoop, one made of scrap wood that became the focal point of their neighborhood nonetheless. The entire town’s children would frequent the Harris household to play together. Lusia was obsessed with the game, and would frequently sneak back into the living room to watch Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell play.

And as she grew older, she grew as a player as well. Eventually reaching 6’3 in high school, she was undeniably the best player in the state — and potentially the country.

Harris was good enough to be offered the opportunity to walk on for the men’s team at Alcorn State, but then she was given an unbeatable proposal: Delta State University, in Cleveland, Mississippi, would completely restart its women’s basketball team in order to offer her and other women a place to play.

Near single-handedly, with only her own skill and the belief of athletic director Marvin Hemphill and coach Margaret Wade, Lusia had brought women’s basketball back to Delta State.

After leading the team to three straight national championships and a 109-6 record, Harris had set a new precedent for the sport. In 1975, her presence in the tournament was enough to draw a newly nationally televised audience. Just one year later and the final of the women’s side of March Madness had Delta State playing at Madison Square Garden, which had never hosted a women’s game before.

On the night of the 1977 NBA draft, Harris would become the second woman ever drafted to the NBA behind Denise Long, who was taken by the then San Francisco Warriors. The NBA did not step in this time, however, as they had with Long, and confirmed they would not void the pick.

Lusia Harris-Stewart would have the opportunity to play, if she so chose.

Instead, Harris would play in the WBL, the Women’s Basketball League, suiting up for two seasons there before the league folded.

Years later, in 1992, Lusia would become the first Black woman inducted to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2003, the WNBA All-Star Game returned to Mississippi. Harris was unable to attend for unknown reasons.

Harris lived just long enough to see a short documentary about her life, one sponsored by NBA legends Shaquille O’Neal and Steph Curry. The Queen of Basketball, as the film proclaimed her, would pass away shortly after in 2022.

It’s a reminder that, somewhat paradoxically, trailblazers are bound to be forgotten due to their very nature. The names throughout history echo this unfortunate fact. From the Harlem Rens to the names of Charles “Tarzan” Cooper and Bob Douglass, it is the nature of stories like theirs to be discarded. The Rens were the first professional basketball team to roster Black players. Charles Cooper was the face of that team, and Douglass was the manager and booker. But, by paving the way for others, they also make it possible for their successors to overshadow and eclipse them.

The world might be a vastly different place if Harris had suited up for the Jazz, or even if she had made that Alcorn State team, but that was never her dream. By the time she left college, her goal was to start a family with her high school sweetheart. Any basketball she played after that point was just extra credit.

Still, despite her choice to say goodbye to the sport she loved at just under 25 years old, she did all she could as a vanguard of women’s basketball.

Most importantly, she set a precedent.

If the WNBA only exists because women like Cheryl Miller proved how good they were over and over again, and if Miller was only able to play because of a women’s college basketball environment that was fostered by the greatness of Lusia Harria-Stewart, then we can thank Harris for much of the greatness in the women’s basketball today.

The truth is, 48 years ago, in Madison Square Garden, women’s basketball took a huge step, one that no one could see coming and one that no one could have expected the outcome of.

Harris’ entrance into college predates Title IX by only a few months. Today, women’s sports are an important part of any athletics program. The road that got us to where we are, where the WNBA finals can average 1.6 million viewers per game, is one littered with forgotten legends.

Today, we remember Lusia Harris-Stewart, if only because without her, the WNBA — and sites like this that exist to cover women’s sports — might not exist.