Oregon's Two Kelly's and the search for basketball zen
Deja Kelly and Kelly Graves found their inner peace after a year of immense struggle and have now found a common cause in bringing Ducks women's basketball back to prominence.
Deja Kelly saw what was being said. How could she not? Logging off Twitter for a little bit would be easy but those comments would still be there when she came back.
“Oregon!?”
“Strange decision.”
“Interesting move…”
“Why?”
She knew what the reaction would be and she knew what her detractors would say. A three-time All-ACC First Teamer coming off a plateau season with disappointing results at North Carolina? Heading to an Oregon program that looked so far removed from a 2019 Final Four appearance? The narratives over the summer wrote themselves. Deja knew better, especially at this stage in her career, than to care about what people were posting online. She had to trust herself and to trust the vision Oregon head coach Kelly Graves had sold her on. But most importantly, she had to believe in the chance to rediscover her love for the game.
“I just wanted to be happy,” she says after a practice and team meal. “I wanted to get back to having fun, playing this game and finding the joy in the game again.”
What she didn’t realize was that her head coach was on a similar journey to finding inner peace. And now, as Oregon’s first season in the Big Ten is set to begin, the Ducks two Kelly’s are calm, collected and ready to revitalize a program that once was on the precipice of national title contention.
It took Kelly Graves awhile to get over 2020. Maybe even a bit longer than he cares to admit. 23 years of Division I coaching had led to that season. With Sabrina Ionescu leading the Ducks to a 31-2 record and a Pac-12 regular season and tournament title, the team felt primed for a March run to remember. But as Ionescu and Graves left the floor of Michelob Ultra Arena the night of March 8th, 2020, a wave of uncertainty flooded Las Vegas. Within a week, the world had shut down, the NCAA Tournament cancelled. A coaching lifetime and a golden opportunity, stolen by what the French call ‘force majeure’. An act of God, an unstoppable force. A pandemic.
“I’m still kind of carrying the weight,” explains Graves. “And it has kind of gotten a little heavy. I think this year, I’m kind of letting go a little bit more and it’s made life a lot easier.”
That weight changed him in some ways and hardened him in others. The joy that he seemed to exude during those 2018-2020 seasons had given way to a coach that seemed to feel the sport changing around him and was unable, or unwilling, to adjust. Since his days at St. Mary’s, he’d had his playbook for finding success: recruit girls whose attitude and coachability meshed with his style. Girls that had chips on their shoulder that would be willing to spend a few years getting developed and playing into their spots. Transfers were used to augment rosters but never to build around. As recently as the 2022 season he philosophically didn’t believe in using the portal as aggressively as his peers. But by the spring of 2024, it was clear that that wasn’t working the same way it used to. Multiple ESPN Top 100 recruits left the team, news of dissatisfaction with the coaching staff permeated message boards and fans started to openly call for his firing.
“I was a little bit slow to embrace the change,” he admits.
Throughout the summer he talked with friends, mentors and colleagues in coaching. Five of his closest friends in the game retired, many citing an exhaustion with the direction it all was heading. One, legendary Stanford head coach Tara Vanderveer, was a bit different than the others. She was leaving on her own terms with a succession plan in place and a hall-of-fame career in hand. Over the summer, Graves sought counsel from her and she helped him process the grief of that 2020 season and his opportunity for a title. As the new world of women’s college basketball became apparent, he started to solicit advice from different places about how to handle it all. At different Oregon fundraising events he would often be paired with Ducks head football coach Dan Lanning and the two became close. As Graves started his journey to enlightenment, it was a man 23 years his junior that helped provide the ‘aha’ moment.
“He’s such an upbeat person,” Graves says of Lanning. “We were just talking and basically it was ‘hey, this is where we’re at. It’s different but this is what it is now. You either accept it or move on.’”
“And it’s like ‘god damn, you’re right’,” adds Graves. “And I just said ‘eff it, man.’ I’m not ready to golf every day and all that kind of stuff.”
It wasn’t time yet and, despite the calls from the Oregon fandom for his job, he still had enough goodwill with his Athletic Director Rob Mullins to be given the runway to turn it around. He decided to get with his assistants — longtime number two Jodie Berry, Tre Simmons and newcomer Jerise Freeman — and throw out the playbook. This year they would be aggressive in the portal, utilize their NIL and approach every season in one year increments instead of 2, 3 or 4 year projects. He would have to let his assistants in on some decisions including NIL figures for specific athletes. In the past, Graves had kept that to himself out of principle.
“Several of our players are making more than some of our staff members,” he says. “And fundamentally, I’ve had issues with that. But what I’m now willing to do is I’ve kind of given some of that responsibility out.”
On paper, the plan looked great. A way to try and rebuild an Oregon program that looked like it had cratered during the 2023-2024 spring season. But the only snag was that aforementioned fact. The Ducks were coming off their worst year in the Kelly Graves era and were trending down from a perception standpoint. They could be active in the portal but who would come?
There was Alexis Whitfield, an All-Big West first teamer at UC Santa Barbara who was returning to high-major basketball after starting her career at Washington. Amina Muhammad, a rotational center for Texas, was also willing to come to Eugene as was BYU guard Nani Falatea and Siena’s Elisa Mevius. But none of the additions felt like the big star that Oregon needed to re-legitimize itself.
So Graves picked up the phone and called Deja Kelly.
Oddly enough, Deja had been feeling the same heaviness as Graves after the 2024 season but for different reasons. Two years of hype in Chapel Hill hadn’t yielded the results she, or the fans around her, had anticipated. After a 25-7 Sweet Sixteen run in 2022, the sky felt like the limit. She wrote an article in the Players Tribune titled ‘We expect to win’. The NIL money flooded in and soon, Deja became a face of UNC athletics and women’s basketball as a whole. She collaborated with Forever 21, Dunkin Donuts and Crocs while also working with smaller companies that gave her equity stakes as part of the deal. Everything felt like it was trending towards her becoming one of basketball’s next big stars.
But the following two years were stagnant in Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament in both seasons but were still short of the expectations that were set after that Sweet Sixteen run. But more than that, Deja felt her love of the game start to slip to a point that she didn’t even really want to play.
“I found myself not playing with the joy that I used to play the game with,” she said on a TikTok after her transfer from UNC. “That’s as blunt as I can get, and that is not a great feeling.”
Which is why she picked up the phone and decided to talk with Kelly Graves, a coach that recruited her heavily out of high school, and hear him out.
“Obviously, when you see that many people go out of a program, it raises questions,” she explains now. “But what his main focus was in that conversation was ‘you know the future and what we have coming up’. We both didn’t really want to dwell on the past and we were all just eyes forward.”
He talked to her about her game and identified what she needed to improve upon to get to the WNBA. For all the criticism that had been levied Graves in recent years, he did have a pedigree of getting players drafted. It wasn’t just Courtney Vandersloot or Sabrina Ionescu but also Satou Sabally and her sister Nyara, Ruthy Hebard, Jillian Alleyne and Kayla Steindl. There was a track record and system that would be appealing if Deja was interested in being the leader they needed.
Beyond the basketball, it was a mental match. Both Kelly’s had something to prove and found common cause in the chips on not just their shoulders but in the chips all their teammates had as well. Whitfield was returning to high-major basketball with something to prove. Muhammad wanted to show that she could be a starter playing starter minutes. Mevius was an MAAC star looking for a step up and Falatea knew she was still the player she was two years ago. Even returning players like Peyton Scott had an edge. The point guard was supposed to be the engine last year before a knee injury derailed the season.
It wasn’t the way things were typically done at Oregon but every player, including Deja Kelly, had some degree of the underdog mentality that Graves historically prizes in players. And, for what felt like the first time since Sabrina Ionescu, he had an extension of himself in the backcourt. For all the questions about ‘why?’ the answer became exceedingly simple: because they all needed each other to find the joy in basketball again.
11 games into the 2024-2025 season, Oregon is enjoying a nice resurgence. They beat then No. 12 Baylor at home to re-announce their presence to the basketball world. Even their losses — to Georgia Tech, South Dakota State and USC — have aged pretty well. The Yellow Jackets are still undefeated and No. 17 in the nation. No. 7 USC boasts two WNBA lottery picks and one of the highest team ceilings in college basketball while South Dakota State’s only two losses are to Duke and Georgia Tech.
The vibe at practices in Matthew Knight Arena are even a little different than they’ve been in the past.
“I’ve been trying to make it less business like every day and have some more fun,” Graves explains. “Play music in practice, kind of step away and give my assistants a lot more. I’ve listened to the feedback and I’ve tried to have a bit deeper of a relationship with these kids. I’m trying to be a bit more purposeful in my dealings with them and getting to know them as not just the basketball players.”
For Graves, the reaction of his players and the early team success is a validation for a new way forward. There is a second act, after all, and this group may indeed be the players that bring Oregon back to its’ place of prominence in the college basketball world.
“The bottom line is,” he says, “is you can teach an old dog new tricks.”
It’s an introspective change that Deja, specifically, has noticed and appreciated.
“KG has been phenomenal to me,” she says. “He’s been amazing. I think it’s something that just really pushes me every day because if he’s speaking that life into me, that makes me want to run through a brick wall for him.”
With each win, social media highlight or acknowledgement from the press, the answer to the fundamental question of Deja Kelly’s transfer come into focus. This is the ‘why’, even if she and her head coach didn’t realize it at the time. Beyond the basketball fit, the player development, NIL opportunities or legacy, the transfer was about finding peace in oneself. Graves needed a player to remind him that he was still a good coach and Deja needed a coach to remind her she was still a good player. In the process, both have managed to embody a quote from the Chinese philosopher Laozi (or Lao Tzu, in the west), considered the modern patriarch of Taoism.
“True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way. It can’t be gained by interfering.”
After some time trying to harness control to make their futures, Graves, Deja and the rest of this Oregon team are working to master the art of letting go. In doing so, they’ve found their peace at last and the love of basketball has returned in turn.
“I wish I had more time here with him, the staff, with the team, but it is what it is,” Deja says, working on that mastery in real time. “I’m just going to cherish the short amount of time I have here and continue to build on that.”
Good work, Andrew. Watching this team is a 180 degree turnaround from last year's experience. They play hard, and they seem to play for each other, sometimes almost to a fault. Fun has returned to Matt Knight Arena, even when the 3's aren't falling. It will be most interesting to see how this is reflected in recruiting.
Last but not least, the energy that Jerise Freeman brings to the bench during games is palpable - she has been a great addition to the staff. Hope they can keep her around.
It brings me great joy and thank God for both Deja and Coach Graves finding their love and passion for the game again. The entire team has been fun to watch and pray for all of their successes in and outside of basketball.