Professional Career
Because the U.S. lacked a women's pro league, Lacy's professional career began overseas, where she played for teams in Greece, Italy and Japan. She led Greece to a European championship in the 1995-1996 season.
Lacy was the first player selected by the Seattle Reign in the ABL Draft on June 19, 1996. From this promising start, her luck seemed to turn sour. Lacy was seriously injured in a car accident on February 4, 1997, and completed her season in Seattle on the injured list. After that year, she was selected by the ABL's expansion Long Beach Stingrays. Expansion teams typically fare poorly in their first several years, but this was an exception: Long Beach made the ABL Finals in their first and only season, where they lost the championship to the Columbus Quest, two games to three.(After winning the first two games, played in Long Beach due to scheduling conflicts in Columbus, the Stingrays were unable to win in Columbus). Notwithstanding their on-court success, the Long Beach franchise folded after one year, and next year Lacy was once again drafted by another ABL expansion team, the even shorter-lived Nashville Noise. Just 15 games into the 1998-1999 season, on December 22, 1998, the ABL itself folded.
No doubt due to her injuries, Lacy went undrafted by any WNBA team in the special post-ABL consolidation draft. However, midway through the 1999 season, Lacy was picked up by the New York Liberty to fill in for their injured All-star center, Rebecca Lobo. Lacy played in 17 games that year for the Liberty, and in 2 more in 2000, but without much success. She has not played in the WNBA since.
Read more about this topic: Venus Lacy
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