Oregon Ducks’ Deja Kelly chasing hoop and broadcasting dreams

EUGENE, Ore. — Deja Kelly was anxious.

It was Nov. 4 and the fifth-year transfer was about to play in her first game for the Oregon women’s basketball team.

Nerves are common in sports, so that wasn’t anything new for Kelly. She had spent the previous four years putting up buckets at North Carolina, one of the most popular brands in all of college basketball, so a non-conference game against a little-known school in California should not have had her that worried.

The game was at 4 p.m. Pacific time. Kelly got to the facility for shootaround at about 10:30 a.m. After practice, she took out her scouting report for the opponent, making note of this player’s strengths and that player’s weaknesses. She identified what would be the keys to the Ducks being successful in this season-opener in their new conference, the Big Ten.

UC Riverside didn’t shoot well last season and had one of the worst three-point defenses in the entire country. On the other hand, they committed the least amount of turnovers per game in the Big West Conference.

All valuable information … if the women’s team weren’t playing California Baptist that day.

Kelly was actually preparing notes for her first-ever broadcast as a Big Ten Network sideline reporter. She would cover the men’s game against UC Riverside, which would take place immediately after the women’s game in the same arena.

She shut down her preparation for the men’s game about an hour and a half before her own game, went out for warm-ups, and then proceeded to drop 10 points, 8 assists and 7 rebounds on the Lancers. Right after, she ran to the shower, got dressed, did her makeup, collected her notes, and appeared on television about an hour later. It was chaotic, to say the least.

“I’m like, ‘This is not even a full glam,’ ” Kelly said from a conference room inside Matthew Knight Arena months later.

Kelly, a graduate transfer guard for the Ducks, is one of college basketball’s more impressive offensive playmakers who contributes to winning no matter where she goes: Kelly led her high school to a state championship in 2020 and followed that up with three 20-win seasons in four years at UNC, including a run to the Sweet 16 in 2022.

She’s also what you could call “Facebook Auntie Famous”: when a random Black person’s success leads to thousands of post shares on the social media app. It’s a lot of virtual finger snaps and “Black Girl Magic’ call-outs. Kelly’s presence as a Black female athlete in sports media is a source of pride for a group of people who have historically been absent from this space. “Multifaceted girly,” she wrote on social media about pulling double duty that day back in November.

While Kelly hopes to one day become a hoops analyst, her main goal is to make it to the WNBA next season. It’s partly why the three-time, first-team all-ACC selection left what she calls a “toxic environment” at her previous school to travel nearly 3,000 miles to the Pacific Northwest to recapture the joy she has for basketball and further develop into a professional-level basketball player.

“They are so uplifting as well as holding me accountable and holding me to a higher standard,” Kelly said of the Ducks program. “And that’s exactly what I needed in order to continue to get better in the things that I need to.”

Oregon had reached sustained success a decade ago (three consecutive Elite Eight appearances from 2017 to 2019) but had fallen off in recent years: the Ducks were bounced out of the first round of the women’s tournament in 2022, missed the tournament in 2023, and went 11-21 last year. This required a complete rebuild for the team, with nine new players, including Kelly, added to the roster this season.

Kelly was told she was crazy for coming here (“Doesn’t this seem like a step backward for her?” one user posted on social media), but the 23-year-old rocked with head coach Kelly Graves’ vision for the program and the offensive system he’s implemented over his 27-year college coaching career that has produced future WNBA champion guards like Courtney Vandersloot and Sabrina Ionescu, Oregon’s all-time leading scorer.

Kelly had always been an exceptional and clutch scorer, leaving UNC as the eighth all-time leading scorer (1,858 points). Against Penn State in January, with less than 15 seconds left in the fourth and the score tied at 61, Kelly called for a screen from center Phillipina Kyei at the 3-point line on the right side of the court. Kelly went left, got the defender on her hip, and then jabbed a little to the right before stepping back into a jumper just behind the free-throw line. Nothing but net. Game over.

“My midrange is like a layup for me,” Kelly said.

Coming to Oregon was about more than scoring for Kelly, who averaged 15.4 points the past four seasons. “I’ve already proven that I can score at a high level consistently,” she said. “So that’s not what I came here to do.”

“Talk yo s—,” I say. Kelly laughs.

Instead, she wanted to become a more well-rounded player, further developing her playmaking skills and efficiency as a shooter.

It’s paid off: Kelly is shooting a career-high (42.4%) on 2-pointers, grabbing a career-high 4.3 rebounds per game, and turning the ball over less than she did her four years at UNC. She’s improved as a facilitator, collapsing the paint and finding open teammates coming off screens rather than always forcing contested jumpers. While getting up shots off the bounce is Kelly’s bread and butter, she’s also shown the ability to be a spot-up shooter as well. On defense, she keeps her hands and feet active, cutting off lanes for opposing guards while knowing how to be in the right spot to take on charges.

That being said, Kelly is attempting the least amount of shots per game (11.4) since her freshman season in 2020-21, and her 3-point percentage has cratered to a career-low 19.6%. The 3-point struggles are alarming, but as the adage goes, Shooters shoot, and Kelly’s confidence hasn’t been rocked.

“We said, ‘OK, there’s two solutions to it, either 1) you don’t shoot anymore, right? Or 2) what the f—, yeah, shoot.’ I know you can’t print that,” Graves said. “And she’s, I think, kept a good attitude about it. She doesn’t take a ton of ’em, but she’s not afraid to take it.”

Due to her height (Kelly is 5-feet-8 compared to presumed No.1 draft pick Paige Bueckers’ 6 feet) and inefficiency, Kelly isn’t projected to go in the first round of the 2025 WNBA draft. But her leadership and playmaking have Kelly on a few teams’ radar. While at the Paris Olympics over the summer, Graves said he spoke with Dallas Wings general manager Curt Miller and Minnesota Lynx Cheryl Reeve about Kelly’s WNBA prospects.

“They just needed her to be more efficient to be a lead player,” Graves said.

Kelly knew she wanted to major in broadcast journalism long before she got to college. Her mother, Theresa Nunn, would hold photo shoots and film Kelly when she was younger, growing up in San Antonio. “I like being in front of the camera, first of all,” Kelly said. But Nunn is also a former college basketball player, so she would have her daughter do analysis for basketball games the two watched together, which, in hindsight, served as a boot camp for Kelly’s future media career.

When Kelly arrived at UNC in 2020, she enrolled in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media and worked as an anchor for the student-led broadcast Sports Xtra. The weekly show covered all of the university’s sports teams, and Kelly sometimes even covered the women’s basketball team.

While talking with Oregon while she was in the transfer portal, she expressed a desire to do broadcasting on the side. Alex Stimson, assistant director of broadcast and live video for Big Ten Network Plus, the student-produced streaming service for the conference’s television network, was made aware of Kelly’s interest last fall. The Big Ten Network is used to working with former athletes, but it’s rare to have an active college athlete providing analysis. At Big Ten Media Day in early Oct. 2024, producers approached Kelly and asked her to give an analysis on the spot. “And then a week later, they were like, ‘OK, we want you for the men’s. Can you come do sideline?’ ” Kelly said.

What Stimson most likes about Kelly is that she’s coachable. She asks the right questions, takes criticism well, and remains poised while on the air.

“She’s not one of those people in broadcasting where they want to be on TV for the sake of being on TV. She wants to be in broadcasting to broadcast, to cover the game, to tell stories, to break down the game,” Stimson said.

The men’s game against UC Riverside took place four weeks later, on Nov. 4. She performed so well that two weeks later, she was placed on the color desk for the men’s game against Troy.

On commentary, Kelly comes across as a natural, able to quickly dissect what she’s seeing on the court. One minute, she’s identifying defensive rotations and coverages, and the next, recalling players’ strengths and weaknesses for both teams. Her analysis has a natural, conversational tone: “Get all up in your grill,” she said while describing the Ducks’ defensive intensity. But for her relaxed energy and repeating of certain words (“intensity” and “impact”), you wouldn’t know that the Troy game was her first time as a color analyst.

“You would never know that she basically just had an hour of prep time and had played a 60 minute basketball game just hours before,” Stimson said.

(Kelly performed so well that on the night of Dec. 4, the network asked her to be on the sideline for the women’s volleyball match the next day. “I played in middle school,” she said of her expertise. “[I] Was not very good.”)

One thing she’s conscious of is how she sounds on television. During our conversation, there’s a familiarity in how we spoke with each other because of our shared background of being Black Americans. How we enunciate certain words, insert certain slang words, and use certain Black phrases. But that’s not how either of us would speak on television. Sports media is heavily white and male, which means broadcast standards were established with a certain audience in mind. With heavy exceptions (see: Scott, Stuart), to make it in this industry as a Black person, you have to be able to code-switch your language to fit those standards. It’s not right, but to get around, you have to get along.

Kelly is mindful of this as a Black woman in this space. Over the summer, she shadowed ESPN analyst and former Tennessee basketball player Andraya Carter and spoke on the phone with Amazon Prime Video studio host Taylor Rooks. They told Kelly to always remember her value and never let anyone diminish her abilities as a Black woman in sports media. Kelly projects her voice differently while on air and takes her time when speaking, something she’s had plenty of experience with while attending UNC (8.3% Black) and Oregon (3.4%).

“It’s definitely different from how I would talk to my teammates to how I would talk on TV,” Kelly said.

She chose to pursue broadcasting alongside basketball because it’s a passion of hers, and she doesn’t want to limit herself. She still gives her all to basketball and still goes hard at practice. This is the sport she picked up when she was still a toddler. The sport that in third grade she said she wanted to be the best at in the state of Texas (she did that), to become a McDonald’s All-American (she did that, too), to play at one of the best programs in the nation in (are you starting to sense a trend?). On the day of our interview, Kelly was getting shots up about an hour before most of her other teammates hit the court for practice.

Nunn, a former college basketball player at Valley City State University, has been coaching and training Kelly since she was four years old. She put her daughter through rigorous drills and practices even at that young age. “Not, obviously, a pro-level,” Nunn said. “I didn’t want to kill her.” Once basketball became serious for Kelly, Nunn noticed a switch go off in her daughter, and she truly locked in. That spirit still lives in Kelly to this day.

“She was one of the most focused young kids I think I’ve ever coached,” Nunn said. “Just to see her drive and determination to get better and prove to me that she could play. 

“So I think that’s what made her great: it’s because she just had an inner sense early to prove everybody wrong, including me.”

Kelly said there’s no question that she’s 100% committed to basketball, but that doesn’t mean she has to be one-dimensional and completely stop everything else that’s not hoops.

“I know the basketball will not bounce forever for me, for anybody,” she said.

The women’s basketball that Kelly aspired to be a part of back when she was attending San Antonio Stars games is light-years different from present-day women’s basketball. For instance, the NCAA women’s tournament wasn’t allowed to use the “March Madness” branding until 2022.

That was then. This is now.

Today, companies are investing in women’s basketball, and women’s college basketball players have some of the top NIL valuations across all sports and are famous only by first name: JuJu, Paige, Hannah.

“And now of course we’re getting compensated for it, which obviously is a plus,” Kelly said.

After the NCAA decided in June 2021 to allow college athletes to profit from endorsement deals, Kelly signed with WME Sports for representation. She’s since received deals from Crocs, Tommy Hilfiger (which included an invite to New York Fashion Week), Beats by Dre and the Rihanna-founded Savage X Fenty, among others.

While media outlets On3 and Forbes estimate that Kelly’s NIL valuation ranges from $236,000 to $326,000, she won’t confirm the amount.

But she will say that NIL has been a “life-changer” for her and other college athletes. As a single mother, Nunn raised Kelly and her brother, Oregon recruit Trae Nunn, constantly moving from apartment to apartment. Nunn had to find ways to pull together money to provide for her kids, even as Kelly was playing basketball at UNC.

NIL changed all of that.

The money from endorsements has allowed Kelly to run her own basketball camp, invest in the National Women’s Soccer League and open her own retirement account. This past summer, she bought a three-bedroom home in Waxahachie, Texas, 30 miles south of Dallas, for her mother, brother and grandmother to live in for as long as they want.

“It was night and day from how my freshman year was, where we’re going from check to check and month to month, barely having any money left over for whatever,” Kelly said of life as a college athlete before NIL.

This rise in fame and exposure has a cost, though.

Across TikTok, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter), Kelly has over 1.3 million followers. With that, Kelly said she faced a “toxic environment” from the men’s and women’s UNC basketball fan base that she described as “degrading” and “sexist.”

While Kelly doesn’t go into specifics, many posts on social media directed at her over the past two years have been in reference to her former relationship with a UNC men’s basketball player: “Deja Kelly ruined Duke UNC forever,” one user wrote. During UNC games, fans would approach her and make threatening comments. Team security, Kelly said, was non-existent.

Kelly said she was told to ignore the comments, but the harassment persisted. Last season, her shooting and free-throw percentages slipped, and her turnovers ticked up slightly. In her final game for UNC, a round of 32 loss to South Carolina, Kelly shot 2 of 13 from the field for just seven points. Kelly lost her joy to play. Basketball was no longer fun. While she enjoyed most of her time with the UNC program, it was time to go.

“There were times last year where I was like, ‘I do not want to go to practice,’ ” she said. “Because I was just so mentally drained at that point.

“And of course, again, our own fan base was toxic. Not all, but majority. So that was tough.”

When reached for comment, UNC athletics stated: “Deja had many, many fans when she played for UNC – and she continues to have many fans in Chapel Hill cheering her on from afar. We were aware that she and the team, like many other collegiate athletes unfortunately, had negative experiences with some opposing fans both on the road and on social media. We met and spoke with the team, Deja and her mother on multiple occasions about their concerns and their security and consulted with police and put them in direct contact with our campus police. We also worked with our team, our staff, opposing schools and the conference to put extra safety measures in place.”

Coming to Oregon, Kelly feels more valued. That joy she lost in Chapel Hill has reemerged in Eugene. She loves playing with her new teammates, even if it’s just for this one season. After practice, Kelly, two teammates and Graves perform the “What are you doing?” TikTok trend where one person does a random movement and everyone else has to replicate it. I can’t make out what Graves says as all four are making swimming motions, but whatever it is causes the three players burst out in laughter.

“They’re not trying to dim my light for anyone else,” Kelly said.

That has translated to the court. The Ducks nearly doubled their win total from last season despite being in the more competitive Big Ten conference compared to the abandoned Pac-12 from a year ago. Oregon has had key wins over No. 12 Baylor and No. 16 Minnesota and was competitive in losses to No. 1 UCLA and No. 9 Ohio State. ESPN’s Bracketology projects Oregon as a top-10 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

With UNC behind her and broadcasting serving a secondary role to basketball, Kelly enters March Madness solely focused on finishing her story as she intended to when she touched down in Eugene last year.

“Kelly [Graves] gave me the keys to be able to help this team get back to where it was,” she said. “And I think that speaks volumes, not only just me as a player but just as me picking this program to do that.”