Jamila Wideman

In September 2018, Wideman was hired by the NBA as Vice President of Player Development.

During the winter of 2005, Wideman reunited with college teammate Kate Starbird and played professionally in Ibiza, Spain.

In 2001, Wideman participated in the Connecticut Forum, where she shared the stage with Stanley Crouch, Anita Hill, Spike Lee, and Bill Russell to talk candidly about race.

Wideman spent the 1999–2000 winter season in Israel, playing for the Elitzur Ramla club in the Israeli Basketball League. Her team won the national championship.

While at Stanford University, she completed a double major, earning a B.A. in political science and African-American studies in 1997. After playing professional basketball, she earned a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

Wideman was selected as the 3rd overall draft pick by the Los Angeles Sparks in the inaugural WNBA draft of collegiate players in the summer of 1997.

In 1997, Wideman founded and implemented another youth program called "Hoopin' with Jamila". This program combined basketball skills clinics with a reading and writing program targeted at young women of color incarcerated in the juvenile justice system in Los Angeles. The program was funded by Nike. USA Today honored Wideman as the "Most Caring Athlete" in 1998, in large part because of the success of the program. The program also earned the National Council on Crime and Delinquency "Community Award", given annually to programs that attempt to provide creative alternatives to juvenile incarceration.

In 1992–1993, Wideman was named USA Today First Team High School All-American, Converse High School All-American, Nike High School All-American, Kodak High School All-American, New England High School Player of the Year, Massachusetts High School Player of the Year, and High School All-American by the WBCA. She participated in the WBCA High School All-America Game in 1993, scoring 10 points.

Her high school basketball team was the subject of a book, In These Girls Hope is a Muscle, by Madeleine Blais. While in high school, Wideman published poems on the complexities of her racial identity in her high school newspaper. Shortly after the Los Angeles uprisings of 1992, she wrote and published a poem titled Black.

Until she was 10 years old, Wideman lived in Laramie, Wyoming, where her father taught Creative Writing at the University of Wyoming. In 1986, she moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, where her father accepted a tenured teaching position at the University of Massachusetts.

Jamila Wideman (born October 16, 1975) is an American lawyer, activist, and former professional basketball player. She is the daughter of author John Edgar Wideman.

Wideman was born on October 16, 1975. Her father, John Edgar Wideman, is an African-American author and a professor at Brown University. Her mother, Judith Ann Goldman, is a lawyer..