WASHINGTON — This time last year, Alexis Morris was enjoying the time of her young athletic life.
As point guard of the LSU basketball team, the 5-foot-9 Morris was on a run that would take LSU to the first national championship in school history. The star of the team was forward Angel Reese, one of two transfers in the starting lineup, but Morris, in her second year under coach Kim Mulkey, was the glue.
On March 26, Morris scored 21 points and added two assists in a 54-42 LSU victory against Miami that put the Tigers in the Final Four. Five days later, Morris scored 27 points as LSU defeated Virginia Tech 79-72 to reach the national championship game against Iowa. On April 2, Morris scored 21 points and handed out nine assists as LSU defeated Iowa and star guard Caitlin Clark to win the title.
While her performance was overshadowed by Reese’s “you can’t see me” gesture directed at Clark, Morris was the engine behind LSU’s national title victory.
“I was so dialed in that game,” Morris said during a recent interview in Washington. “I was just so dialed in on making it all come full circle.”
A year later, Morris, 24, is a member of the Harlem Globetrotters, the iconic basketball entertainment franchise which has combined athleticism with basketball skills and comedy routines to entertain crowds in the United States and abroad for years. The Globetrotters are a far cry from the sort of high-level competition Morris encountered from high school through college. But the Trotters represent the pro basketball life Morris has embraced in the short term, while the long term is working itself out.
Meanwhile she is getting a heavy dose of the pro life grind. She has maintained a grueling schedule since joining the Globetrotters in February. When LSU takes on UCLA in the Sweet 16 on Saturday, Morris will be with the Globetrotters in Minnesota.
Morris’ path to the Globetrotters also underlines the narrow choices available to women who aspire to play pro basketball after their collegiate careers end.
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Although she had a year of college eligibility remaining, Morris decided to take the leap and begin the next chapter of a career that began at Baylor, continued at Rutgers, moved to Texas A&M, and ended at LSU, where she was reunited with Mulkey.
Talk about coming full circle. After Morris was arrested for assault after her freshman season at Baylor, Mulkey kicked her off the team for breaking team rules. Morris said that a large part of her joy in winning a national title last season was making up for the national title she missed in 2019 when Baylor won the women’s NCAA championship.
“In 2019, I had to watch Baylor win the national championship,” Morris said. “I was supposed to be the starting point guard for that team. I got dismissed from Baylor. I had to sit on my couch with tears rolling down my eyes watch them get rings and win the championship. Nobody knows how that feels unless you’ve been in that position.”
Morris was selected 22nd overall by the Connecticut Sun in the WNBA draft in April 2023, but was waived the following month. Her brief WNBA career exposed the fragility of life for female basketball players who don’t make the WNBA but still aspire to play pro basketball. Being cut also showed the strong-willed Morris how ill-prepared she was for the next level.
Morris remembers the Sun’s training camp when nothing made sense. The terminology used to describe offensive sets was confusing, and even the defensive switches were unfamiliar.
“I didn’t know what I was getting into when I was going into a training camp,” she said. “Yeah, I had agents, but they weren’t telling me what I was about to face going into training camp. I had my mom. She’s never been in this position before. I didn’t have any pieces around me that had experienced what I was about to go into to even guide me in the right direction. So, I’m just I’m learning as I go.
“It’s like a foreign language. It’s like I’m in a foreign country, but I’m in the States. I’m right here in the States.”
More significantly, with only 144 roster spots available in the WNBA, the competition to make a team is ferocious, especially for young players like Morris who are trying to break in. A frequent criticism of the league from younger players is that older players are not always willing to help those who will potentially replace them.
The pro world was too much for Morris to handle in a short amount of time — the style of play, the impatience and a thin margin of error.
“I’m picking up on things, but I’m not applying it as fast as I should for the coaches’ liking,” she said. “I’m a fast learner, but everything was so new and you had to prove yourself in a short period of time. You don’t have time to do it over in training camp.
“Either you know it or you don’t. When you get to the pros, you make a mistake on this play, now it’s the next person coming in the rotation to see if they can do it better, if they can do it faster, if they can do it quicker.”
“There’s a way to do things professionally. You always want to come off as professional. You don’t want to come off as someone who’s hard to work with or a pain in the butt. Because, unfortunately, that’s been my case for speaking on topics and issues that I have no business speaking on. But it’s the truth. It was a learning lesson for me.”
— Alexis Morris
Morris didn’t help herself after being waived when she suggested that WNBA teams should cut veterans to make room for rookies. She also criticized veteran players for taking up roster spots.
“The vets gotta know when to cut the net, and pass the torch bro,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “If you knocking at 35, hang it up and I mean WIRED HANGER ‘Hang it up.’ ”
Morris eventually apologized for her comments, but the damage was done. She had to hope that her comments would not be held against her.
“So, I had to learn the hard way. Even if it’s your truth,” she said.
“There’s a way to do things professionally. You always want to come off as professional. You don’t want to come off as someone who’s hard to work with or a pain in the butt. Because, unfortunately, that’s been my case for speaking on topics and issues that I have no business speaking on. But it’s the truth. It was a learning lesson for me. It’s still my ultimate goal to make a WNBA roster or make a team, even with those comments I made.”
Mike Lawrence/NBAE via Getty Images
Since 1996, the WNBA has been the primary landing spot for the top female basketball players,
Playing in Europe was the most popular way for female players to supplement their income. All of that changed on Feb. 17, 2022, when Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner was arrested after a drug sniffing dog allegedly detected vape cartridges containing hashish oil at an airport near Moscow. Griner’s arrest and detainment for nearly 10 months discouraged many WNBA players from playing in Europe.
After being waived by the Sun, Morris reluctantly began her overseas odyssey.
“Her situation played a huge role in me not wanting to go overseas,” Morris said, “but I didn’t know what other way to get back to the WNBA or to get back in the line of vision of the WNBA scouts without having to go overseas. So, I said, ‘you know what, whatever the fears I may have I got to face,’ and I said, ‘I’m gonna go.’ ”
She first went to Romania and negotiated a contract without an agent. “The worst decision I could have made,” she said. Morris then hired an agent who signed her to a contract to play with Ilkem Yapi Tarsus of the Turkish women’s Super League. One problem: She was still under contract with the Romanian team.
“I messaged the president of the Romanian club and I say, ‘Hey, I’m not coming anymore,’ ” she recalled. “So, I fly to Turkey thinking I verbally told the Romanian club I’m not coming. I’m thinking I’m good. I’m good. I’m great. I’m going to go ball out in Turkey.”
Morris quickly discovered that that was not how it worked.
“You can’t do that. This isn’t college, where you can just decommit and they’ll do the paperwork for you. That’s not how it works in the pros,” she said. “Once you sign a contract, you are liable. You are committed to their contract.”
Morris was told that she had to return to Romania to fulfill her contract. She returned but became disenchanted by the level of talent of the Romanian team and believed being associated with the team would hurt her chances of getting back to the WNBA. “I’m like, ‘Is this what I’ve worked my whole career for?’ ” she said. “This ain’t going to get me back to the WNBA. They are going to have more questions than answers. The concerns will outweigh the interest.”
Morris then signed a contract to play for Saint-Amand Hainaut Basket in France. She soon butted heads with the coach over style of play. She left the team and returned to the United States. This time, Morris was determined to resume her career at home.
She reconnected with Barry Hardy, the vice president of player personnel and tour development for the Globetrotters and Al Clocker, the global recruiting director. Morris said she told them that she wanted to come home. She agreed to terms and debuted with the Globetrotters on Feb. 9 in Springfield, Massachusetts.
There is talk of eventually having an all-female Globetrotters team, though team president Keith Dawkins said that such a groundbreaking initiative is not imminent. Lynette Woodard, the former University of Kansas All-American and Hall of Famer, became the first woman to play for the Globetrotters in 1985. Since then, 20 women have played with the Globetrotters.
This year, Morris is one of seven women to play on tour.
“I want to blaze a new trail,” Morris said. “It’s only been 20 women to be Harlem Globetrotters. How many women can say that they’ve been Harlem Globetrotters?”
Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Ultimately, Morris wants to find her way back to the WNBA. I asked how will playing with the Harlem Globetrotters help her do that.
Founded in 1926, the Globetrotters were once a highly competitive team made up exclusively of Black players. They won the 1940 World Basketball tournament and defeated the Minneapolis Lakers in 1948. For much of their existence, however, the Globetrotters’ signature has been vaudevillelike antics, and combining athleticism and comedic routines to entertain crowds.
“I’m still playing basketball,” Morris said. “The skills that you learn here, you can only learn from being a Harlem Globetrotter and it does translate into playing competitively: flashiness, the dynamics of your game. It’ll help my individual game. I’ll be a better ballhandler. I’ll have better hand-eye coordination when I leave here.
“I do unrequired things maybe my other teammates don’t have to do because they’ve settled into being Harlem Globetrotters. I have other goals, dreams and aspirations with this basketball journey I’m on.”
When she looks back on her still-in-progress journey and surveys the current state of women’s basketball, Morris sees phenomenal progress, especially at the collegiate level. But the pro level must expand.
“My biggest fear for women’s basketball is where’s the young talent going to go,” she said. “Where is the new talent going to go with limited roster spots, because college is at its peak but what does it mean at the professional level?”
And that’s the dilemma facing the women’s game: greater young talent than ever before, competing for spaces at a pro level that has not expanded.
“What’s the WNBA going to do?” Morris asked. “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to keep grinding.”
Morris continues to pull for LSU. Although she may not have received due credit for the role she played in last year’s championship, she bleeds purple and gold.
“I care, I’m locked-in,” she said. “I’m never gonna not support because I may have had some mishaps along the way. I want to see my Tigers go back to back.”
That may be difficult without Morris to guide the ship. Last year this time, she led LSU to a national title in her home state of Texas. Since then, she’s been growing and expanding her reach.
From Romania to Turkey to France and back to the United States, Morris has been globetrotting and learning along the way.
