Courtesy of Chris Maynard, www.Hoops4thesoul.com
If you watch NBA or WNBA basketball on ESPN, you’re likely familiar with Nancy Lieberman-Cline, a sideline reporter and analyst for the sports conglomerate.
However, are you familiar with the name of Lusia Harris?
If you’re a fan/historian of the game of basketball, you should learn more about both of these women.
Thirty two years ago today, Harris was the first woman ever selected in the NBA Draft.
After a dominating basketball career at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, Harris was a seventh-round selection of the New Orleans Jazz in the 1977 NBA Draft.
That draft would include notable players like:
§ Kent Benson of Indiana;
§ Otis Birdsong of Houston;
§ Marques Johnson of UCLA;
§ Walter Davis of North Carolina:
§ Bernard King of Tennessee;
§ Jack Sikma of Illinois Wesleyan;
§ Ernie Grunfield of Tennessee;
§ Cedric Maxwell of UNC-Charlotte;
§ Bo Ellis of Marquette;
§ Norm Nixon of Duquesne;
§ Eddie Jordan of Rutgers; and
§ James “Buddha” Edwards of Washington.
Harris would not attend camp with the Jazz due to her pregnancy, and would return to Delta State as an assistant coach and admissions counselor.
Had she attended camp, she would have been matched up against famous basketball names like Pistol Pete Maravich, Gail Goodrich, Truck Robinson and Slick Watts.
While Harris may have never gotten the official opportunity to play in the NBA, her contributions to the game of basketball were hardly diminished.
Harris-Stewart (the name she now goes by) was the first woman inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and also a member of the first class inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
Get to know more about the trail blazing Lucy Harris-Stewart:
While Harris never played against men in a professional basketball game, Lieberman got the opportunity that her predecessor never did 23 years ago today.
That’s right, nine years to the day of Harris’ selection in the 1977 NBA Draft, Lieberman became the first woman to play in a professional men’s basketball game.
On June 10, 1986, Lieberman suited up for the USBL’s Springfield Fame during a 122-107 victory over the Staten Island Stallions.
Her coach in that game was Henry Bibby and a teammate was future Washington Bullets’ marksman Michael Adams.
Here’s a great story on her USBL debut:
Lieberman’s stay in the USBL wouldn’t be a one-game experience. She would play out the 1986 season with the Fame and then move on to the league’s Long Island Knights in 1987.
The following year, she played for the Washington Generals, where she met and eventually married a teammate named Tim Cline.
In 2008, the 50-year-old Lieberman signed a 7-day contract with the WNBA’s Detroit Shock, for whom she tallied 0 points and 2 assists in her first game.
For more on Nancy Lieberman-Cline, check out these great resources: