‘The Queen of Basketball’

Lusia Harris’ story only gets better: she’s now won an Oscar.

And just as his former Los Angeles Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant did four years ago in another category, Shaquille O’Neal can also claim to be an Oscar winner.

“The Queen of Basketball,” featuring a pair of basketball legends with O’Neal and Stephen Curry among the 22-minute film’s executive producers and prime movers, won the Academy Award for short documentary on Sunday.

The award comes roughly two months after the death of Harris, who scored the first basket in Olympic women’s basketball history and was the first woman officially drafted by an NBA team. Ben Proudfoot directed the short film, which even educated some passionate basketball fans about the pioneer’s story.

“If there is anyone who doubts there is an audience for female athletes and wonders if their stories are valuable, entertaining or important … let this Academy Award be the answer,” Proudfoot said at the awards ceremony in Los Angeles.

Harris is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, as is O’Neal. But even the four-time NBA champion, widely regarded as one of the game’s greats, was unfamiliar with her story.

“I didn’t know who she was at first,” O’Neal said earlier this month.

Few did.

But the film and the involvement of O’Neal and Curry (the Golden State Warriors star wore tennis shoes earlier this month with ‘Queen Lucy’ emblazoned on them) helped her story get told more and more.

Harris helped Delta State University win three consecutive national championships in the 1970s and won a silver medal for the United States at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Harris was selected by the New Orleans Jazz in the seventh round of the 1977 NBA draft, but she became pregnant at the time and never actually tried out for the team.

Proudfoot also used the Oscar-winning moment to call for the release of two-time Olympic gold medalist and standout player Brittney Griner, who is imprisoned in Russia.
Griner was detained after arriving at a Moscow airport, according to reports, in mid-February, when Russian authorities said a search of her luggage revealed vaporizer cartridges allegedly containing cannabis-derived oil.

Griner could face up to 10 years in prison under Russian law. “Bring Brittney Griner home,” Proudfoot said.