The trailblazer was Anna Johnson<\/a>, who in 1979 became the first woman from Oakland to play professionally, suiting up for the short-lived San Francisco Pioneers. Nearly two decades later, Rehema Stephens, a star at Oakland Tech, was drafted by the Sacramento Monarchs in 1998. Amisha Carter, out of McClymonds, followed in 2004 and played one season with the New York Liberty. Gray-Lawson was drafted in 2010.\u00a0<\/p>\nOderah Chidom, technically born in Hayward but shaped by her years at Bishop O\u2019Dowd, reached the WNBA in 2017 after being drafted by the Atlanta Dream.<\/p>\n
What for a time looked like a pipeline for the men was never anything more than a pump spray for the women. \u201cWe just didn\u2019t have the same opportunities as the men,\u201d Gray-Lawson said. \u201cThe guys were traveling and getting on the big stages early. For us, it wasn\u2019t until later \u2014 if at all. It really just came down to opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
As an Oaklander, Gray-Lawson was made to feel like an oddity upon arriving in the WNBA. \u201cI\u2019ll never forget the owner shaking my hand and being shocked I went to Cal. He didn\u2019t expect that from a kid from Oakland,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was a defining moment \u2014 realizing people didn\u2019t know what to expect from me, and I had to be the one to set the mold.\u201d<\/p>\n
For many of her peers, opportunity never came in the WNBA at all. Instead, Oakland\u2019s top women\u2019s players often had to take their talents abroad.<\/p>\n
Gabby Green, after starring at Cal, signed a training camp deal with the Los Angeles Sparks but built her pro career overseas. Breanna Brown, out of Bishop O\u2019Dowd, spent her post-college years in international leagues. Asha Thomas, another O\u2019Dowd alum and Cal record-holder, also went overseas before moving into coaching. And Faatimah Amen-Ra, who grew up in Oakland after emigrating from Toronto, carved out a playing career across four continents before founding the Women\u2019s Premier Basketball Association, a semi-pro league she now runs out of Oakland.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, some of the Bay Area\u2019s most recognizable women\u2019s stars have come not from Oakland proper but from its surrounding suburbs. Brittany Boyd-Jones, a Berkeley High product, became a first-round pick by the Liberty in 2015. Courtney Paris, who played at Piedmont High, enjoyed a long WNBA career and now coaches in Chicago. Chelsea Gray \u2014 raised in Hayward and Stockton, and a cousin of Gray-Lawson \u2014 is a former WNBA Finals MVP and remains one of the faces of the Las Vegas Aces. (The Aces are currently leading the Phoenix Mercury 3\u20130 in this year\u2019s WNBA Finals, with Gray once again playing a key role). And Sabrina Ionescu, from Walnut Creek and Miramonte High in Orinda, is already a cornerstone of the Liberty and one of the league\u2019s most marketable players.<\/p>\n
That geographic shift underscores the contrast: While Oakland proper has been a reliable source of NBA stars, its women\u2019s basketball success stories increasingly come from the suburbs.<\/p>\n
Oakland\u2019s \u2018incredible park system\u2019<\/p>\n
Brekke-Miesner points to the city\u2019s early investment in public recreation as a reason for the gender asymmetry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the early 1900s, Oakland had this incredible park system \u2014 baseball fields, basketball courts, swimming pools, playground directors at every school,\u201d he said. \u201cFor most children in Oakland, their first initiation into organized sports and coaching was on those playgrounds. That system was unique in America.\u201d The results were staggering. From playgrounds to junior highs to the Oakland Athletic League, generations of boys came up through a system that functioned a little like baseball\u2019s minor leagues \u2014 each level tougher than the last, each producing athletes who would eventually star in the pros. Girls, though, weren\u2019t permitted in that pipeline.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before Title IX, Oakland girls had virtually no access to organized school sports; options were limited to \u201cplay days\u201d or intramural-style games that were treated more like recreation than competition. By the 1950s and \u201960s, while boys were already moving through structured leagues and getting the attention of college scouts, girls\u2019 teams were practically invisible.<\/p>\n
The inequities lingered even after the passage of Title IX in 1972. Oakland schools didn\u2019t fully implement its requirements for years. The infrastructure that supported boys \u2014 from public playground directors who ran after-school programs, to the junior high leagues that fed into the Oakland Athletic League \u2014 had been designed with boys in mind. There were few (if any) women hired into those early roles, and girls weren\u2019t part of the system those coaches and leagues were meant to serve. So even as opportunities technically opened up, girls\u2019 teams couldn\u2019t count on having fields, referees, or coaches ready for them. Instead, new programs had to be created from scratch, which meant that in the late 1970s and \u201980s they remained underfunded, undercoached, and underpublicized.<\/p>\n
By the time the WNBA launched in 1997, Oakland girls were still catching up. And at the very moment that a new generation of girls might have seen a professional future in basketball, the collapse of the city\u2019s own recreational system meant that many never got the chance to take those first steps in Oakland. Budget cuts beginning in the late 1990s shut down after-school programs and led to the closure of several recreation centers and gyms, as Brekke-Miesner noted. The Oakland Athletic League, once a proving ground for future pros, struggled to field full rosters in some sports.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the same time, the growth of charter schools siphoned students away from traditional public schools \u2014 and those charters often lacked the funding or facilities to offer full athletic programs. The result: fewer teams, fewer coaches, and fewer opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou drive by playgrounds now and don\u2019t see much activity anymore,\u201d Brekke-Miesner said. \u201cIt\u2019s a sad thing to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gray-Lawson remembers how steep the climb was, even in what she calls the Bay Area\u2019s \u201cgolden era\u201d of women\u2019s hoops.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t even get to a big recruiting tournament until junior year,\u201d she said. \u201cIt really came down to being in the right place at the right time \u2014 and a lot of girls never got that chance.\u201d <\/p>\n
Visibility and access were scarce. Gray-Lawson credits her break to a coach in Los Angeles who put her on the national AAU circuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat opened doors for me that otherwise wouldn\u2019t have opened. Opportunity is everything,\u201d said Gray-Lawson, who was a McDonald\u2019s All-American her senior year of high school, along with three other East Bay products.<\/p>\n
\u2018If you can see it, you can dream it\u2019<\/p>\n
The story of opportunity is also a story of geography. Brekke-Miesner pointed to rising housing costs and demographic change as one cause of the hoops gender disparity. Families have left Oakland and moved to the suburbs and beyond, where schools and clubs often have stronger resources. The importance of AAU basketball in the recruiting circuit has likewise tilted the court in favor of the wealthier families in the suburbs.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuburban teams have money and access,\u201d Gray-Lawson said. \u201cSome programs charge $6,200 a summer to play. Most Oakland kids can\u2019t afford that. You can be incredibly talented, but if you\u2019re not on that circuit, you don\u2019t get seen. It\u2019s not about talent. It\u2019s about opportunity and money.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/UG1syDP2XGhCnmKGEEaKoLTY6YPylADk3grtkVq7XIlmbSAWU4nwEwX8aptDwqm0JEbkhno1JfPl8EwPrSgYRCepOdRX3w111gge.jpeg\")
Today, Gray-Lawson is the athletic director at Oakland Tech. Credit: The Oaklandside<\/p>\n
While the arrival of the Golden State Valkyries in San Francisco has brought about a regional women\u2019s basketball boom, Gray-Larson wasn\u2019t so sure it would help the game in Oakland. \u201cTickets are $200 on a Monday night,\u201d Gray-Lawson said. \u201cHow many kids in Oakland can afford that? Being around the game matters. If you can see it, you can dream it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a way, that\u2019s her job now: helping kids to see opportunities that might not be immediately visible to them. After her own career \u2014 which included two seasons in the WNBA and a few stints overseas \u2014 she returned to The Town and now serves as athletic director at Oakland Tech.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For her, the work is as much about presence as it is about wins and losses.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy job at Tech is to be visible,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m still in the neighborhood I grew up in, showing kids that it\u2019s possible. I tell them to keep dreaming \u2014 but also make a plan. Network. Learn how to put yourself in the right rooms. Because it\u2019s not just what you know, it\u2019s who you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
“*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA came to Sacramento in 1997, and Alexis Gray-Lawson would pile into the car with her 12-and-under…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":290016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1339,2473,148830,62,67,132,68,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-290015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-golden-state-valkyries","10":"tag-oakland-tech","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115345879607395774","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/AP03042405402-1600x1374.jpg\")
Childhood friends Jason Kidd (left) and Gary Payton (right), both from Oakland, were NBA colleagues in the 1990s and 2000s. Credit: AP Photo\/Morry Gash<\/p>\n