Lusia Harris, the forgotten basketball queen

The rearview mirror. Use it. It helps to avoid colliding with those coming from behind. Like the past. He warns: «Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear». Yes, so why not use it in life too? Looking ahead is important, it serves to discover the new, to enhance it. Everything is new, cool, beautiful. Original, unique, never seen before.

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You will know that there is a Yankee girl who is extraordinary at playing basketball, her name is Caitlin Clark, she has just landed in the Wnba (Women’s National Basketball Association), the women’s Pro League, in the Indiana Fever team. She is the Wonder Woman of basketball, no one in the history of college basketball has scored as much as her, not even among men. America went crazy for Caitlin and so did her audience: 18.9 million spectators watched her play with the College of Iowa in the championship final, which was however won by the opposing team. Skyrocketing figures also for TV rights, the Wnba intends to renegotiate the contract. The Clark Effect is worth $200 million. Not bad if you consider that the American women’s soccer league (Nwsl) signed for 80 and the Italian men’s soccer Serie A receives 700 million from Dazn.

Caitlin is the new object of desire, America’s sweetheart. At 22, she has sponsors worth three million dollars and on the day of the draft, when the teams choose the players, Clark showed up dressed in Prada: white satin miniskirt, oversized shirt, rhinestone top. The others weren’t joking either. If you want to become the basketball princess, a little glamor doesn’t hurt.

The Queen of Basketball. That’s what they called her in the documentary that won her Oscars. And also The Forgotten Queen. The forgotten queen. Her name was Lucy Harris, known as Lucy, first woman to score a basket at the Olympics in Montreal. She was 21 years old, it was ’76 and basketball opened to women forty years later than the men’s tournament. Lucy makes history with that basket. And in ’77 she remains there: she is the only player to be drafted by an NBA team. You understood correctly, it’s not a joke: they considered her worthy of playing with male professionals, with basketball giants like Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Why not? She was a guy who averaged 30 points a game. Extreme physical power, elegance, shooting ability. She’s an alien.

Lusia was born in the winter of 1955 in Minter City, a small town in southern Mississippi, into an African-American family of nine children. Her parents work on the cotton plantations, she too, having returned from school, has to help in the fields. The challenge is in front of the house where there is a makeshift basket hanging. «It was a simple life, we had nothing, but we didn’t need anything. School, work, endless basketball games with my brothers and sisters. At night, well after the time I had to go to bed, I put a sheet over the TV to filter the light and watched the NBA for hours: Kareem, Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson, my idol.”

When he reaches high school he is already over six feet tall. They mock her: Long, tall and that’s all. “They told me I was long, tall and that was it, and I couldn’t do anything in life.” She dedicates herself to basketball, studies the fundamentals, learns the game. Far from being a useless monster, she has muscles to dominate, a sweet right hand to score and a great talent. When it’s time to go to college, there would be Alcorn State University, a historic black institution that has no women’s basketball team while the smaller Delta State University is close to home and has one. There’s a problem and it’s not the height, it’s now 1.91: in college they’re all white. Mississippi Burning. Living together is not easy. For four years, Lucy was the only black player in the team coached by the ambitious Margaret Wade who she knew she could count on as a phenomenon.

Sport integrates on the pitch, but does not heal inequalities off it. «Being the only black girl on the team was no walk in the park. I wasn’t really friends with any of my teammates, we were too different, but once we got into the game and started playing we had a phenomenal understanding.” There is only one tactic: pass the ball to Harris who leads the team to the title for three consecutive years while she becomes an All American three times. She makes herself known, they also admire her at the Madison Team Garden, the temple of great basketball. Technique, dynamism, rebounding ability. However, Abba haven’t written the song The winner takes it all yet.

Once she finished university Lucy would like to continue playing, but there was no place to go, there was no space, the Wnba didn’t exist yet, it would have been born in ’97. And it was quite impossible for a female athlete to support herself through sports, basketball paid for college, not her future. Her surprise came in June 1977 at the NBA draft: the New Orleans Jazz (now Utah) chose her in the seventh round, she preceded the names of 33 men. An advertising ploy, a way to imitate the Kansas City Kings who bet on the then Bruce Jenner (now Caytlin), gold in Montreal in the decathlon? Lewis Schaffel, general manager of the club, denies this: «We believe he has the physique to play with us and I don’t say this ironically».

The battle of the sexes dates back to 1973: Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs on a tennis court, but the match on equality has just begun. They call Lucy on her phone to get a statement from her. She is realistic, modest, she doesn’t boast. “I was quite shocked, I play quite well in women’s basketball but among men it would be a completely different thing.”

New Orleans insists and invites her to the summer rookie camp. But she has been engaged to George Stewart since high school and becomes pregnant with his first daughter. She is also diagnosed with bipolar disorder, her basketball falls off her radar, she slips into anonymity. She is no longer a star, just a woman who has to raise her family. She is an assistant at Delta State, where she obtained a master’s degree in Education in ’84. After a stint as a head coach at Texas Southern University and a nervous breakdown related to her illness, she decides to return home and accepts the head coaching role at her former high school in Greenwood, Mississippi. There she finally finds some serenity and can reflect on what was (not) her career. «In all those years I had never read an article about myself, nor had I ever understood the impact I had had and the successes I had achieved. When I picked up some newspaper clippings again I said to myself: wow, impressive.”

In 1992 Lucy became the first African American to enter the Hall of Fame and was accompanied on stage by her lifelong idol, Oscar Robertson. Nice recognition, even if the world doesn’t care about her. She is the first modern player, everyone recognizes it, but she is forgotten. She has four children, divorces, has no sponsor. Lusia Harris? And who is she? We have to wait until the evening of March 27, 2022 to clear the fog and look carefully in the rearview mirror. Canadian director Ben Proudfoot wins the Oscar for best documentary short, produced by the New York Times, with the collaboration and gratitude of two great NBA champions, Shaquille O’Neal and Steph Curry. The Queen of Basketball tells the story of a woman who marked the world of basketball, but she remained unknown to the general public. And she says: «I have no regrets about not having continued to play or having rejected the NBA. My children have all gone to university, have doctorates, master’s degrees, one is a lawyer. Of course, if I had been a man I would have been able to continue my basketball career, it would have been worth it financially, I would have been famous, I would have been able to do things that I have only dreamed of in my life. But it didn’t happen, so I don’t have the problem.”

No revenge, a lot of moderation and memories of a sport that was then just a part of life. Lucy did not enjoy the Oscar. She died two months earlier, at 66. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. Best wishes to Miss Clark and a caress to Mrs Harris.