Philly native Marcedes Walker earned one more basketball blessing on Azerbaijan’s 3-on-3 team at the Olympics

Basketball has the power to change lives, shape generations, and turn strangers into family.

Southwest Philadelphia legend Marcedes Walker is proof.

A perennial All-Big East selection at Pittsburgh, Walker, now 37, recently added Olympian to her list of accolades, leading Azerbaijan’s 3-on-3 women’s basketball team during the Paris Olympics.

“I really can’t put it into words,” Walker said in a telephone interview. “We didn’t really get to understand what it meant until we came to the opening ceremony, and we were looking at each other like, ‘Hey, Olympian. Oh, what’s up, Olympian?’”

The former University City High School standout’s career, which included a brief stint in the WNBA followed by more than a decade overseas, has concluded.

Those who know her best, though, believe the 6-foot-3 center remains as grateful today to those who made her career possible as the day she started.

“[Basketball] changed my baby’s whole life,” said Walker’s aunt, Yvonne Martin. “She found a different outlook on life. She just needed something positive in her life. It was such a blessing.”

Walker had played professionally in Azerbaijan since 2015, opening a door to this Olympic opportunity.

Tracing her origins reveals a game of follow the bouncing ball that illustrates how basketball changed Walker’s life and the lives of the high school and college coaches that helped shape hers.

Screams from the East Mount Airy home of Philly coaching legend Lurline Jones may have given neighbors a scare during the July 26 opening ceremony in Paris.

Jones, 80, wasn’t about to keep her elation inside when she saw Walker atop a boat churning down the Seine.

“My neighbors must’ve thought I had lost my mind,” Jones said. “I’m really so proud of her. I really am. Not just because she’s in the Olympics, but just because she’s such a great person.”

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When Azerbaijan qualified in April, Walker sent Jones a text message that still makes the former longtime University City coach emotional.

“I will keep it forever,” Jones said. “It made me cry. She said, ‘Coach, thanks for believing in me because I wouldn’t have gotten this far if you didn’t believe I could do it.’”

Walker started playing basketball at 13 years old after her grandmother, Florence Martin, gave her an ultimatum.

“I was about to get put away in eighth grade,” Walker said. “So I knew I better find something to do or I was going to end up [somewhere else]. My grandmom told me if I didn’t find something, I was going to a boarding school or something.”

Walker eventually started playing basketball at the Christy Recreation Center on South 55th Street, where she remains the only woman on a mural inside the building.

For high school, Walker attended University City, where her mother, Marcella, once played for Jones, who became a coach after graduating from Morgan State in 1965. (Walker’s younger sister, Markel, also later starred for Jones at U-City before a standout career at UCLA.)

Track, though, was Jones’ first love. She got more serious about basketball while coaching Yolanda Laney, the mother of New York Liberty star Betnijah Laney-Hamilton. Laney was so good at U-City that Jones attended coaching clinics hosted by John Chaney and C. Vivian Stringer just to keep up.

Perhaps as a result, Jones was blunt with Marcedes, whom Jones said played class clown as a freshman to fit in.

“I told her, ‘If you want to be a clown, join Ringling Brothers,’” Jones said. “The next three years, she was a beast in the classroom. She turned her grades around and was always so pleasant.”

Before long, Walker was sought by major college programs and became an honorable mention selection on the McDonald’s All American team.

“Words can never describe the pain that Marcedes has endured” growing up in Southwest Philly, her mother, Marcella, said. “And she still stayed focused. Basketball truly took her on a journey that was needed and well-deserved. It helped her to grow into the woman that she is …”

Agnus Berenato was a first-time coach who was newly hired at Pitt when she arrived at Walker’s home for a recruiting visit.

Friends of Walker’s watched Berenato’s car outside to ensure its safety. Inside, Berenato guaranteed something similar to Walker’s family.

Walker had been recruited by Dawn Staley at Temple and Stringer at Rutgers, among others.

“Coach Berenato promised that I would be OK,” Walker said. “She came to my grandmom’s house and promised I would be OK.”

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Generations earlier, Jim Phelan, then the head coach at Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, Md., uttered nearly identical words to the mother of Fred Carter, who lived in North Philly and starred at Ben Franklin High.

Carter later became the first Black student to live full-time on the Mount’s campus. He later played eight seasons in the NBA, including several with the 76ers. (He also is this writer’s father.)

Before he became an NBA coach, Carter, now 79, coached women’s basketball at Mount St. Mary’s, where he coached Berenato (née McGlade), who grew up in Gloucester City.

“Coach B is part of our village because she made Marcedes see that there’s more out there than the Philadelphia streets,” Yvonne Martin said through tears.

Walker made an instant impact at Pitt and eventually helped the Panthers to three NCAA Tournament appearances, including back-to-back runs to the Sweet 16.

“She took a chance and her grandmom took a chance on me at Pitt,” Berenato said via phone.

“I think our team blended and made a good partnership,” she added later. “That’s what education is all about. That’s what my coach, Coach Carter, taught me.”

Berenato beamed with pride watching Walker during the Olympics, even when she helped Azerbaijan upset Team USA, the defending gold medalists. A loss to Canada on the final day of pool play ended Azerbaijan’s Olympic run.

“As a coach, I always had a dream to coach in the Olympics,” Berenato said. “To have a player there and to have it be Marcedes, I really can’t even express how proud I am. My family, my kids, we’re so proud.”

Walker is so beloved by Berenato’s family that her daughter, Christina, chose “Mercedes” as her name for the Catholic sacrament of confirmation.

“I’m giving a talk to student-athletes in a couple weeks,” Berenato said. “I will use [Walker] as a beacon of hope and a beacon of light.”

“I think her basketball journey is complete,” Berenato added later. “What it has done for her, just like it has for me, basketball has given her everything. That little round ball has taken us places … and her future is so incredibly bright.”

For now, Walker’s immediate plan is to rest and spend time with family, whom she took to Paris.

She will officially retire at the end of August. During her pro career, she won a championship in Turkey, where she also was named the league’s most valuable player.

She also played in Italy and Israel after being waived in 2008 by the now-defunct Houston Comets of the WNBA. Markel Walker also played overseas for several seasons.

Marcedes Walker had unlaced her sneakers a few years ago before the president of her team in Azerbaijan asked her to return for an Olympic run.

This time, though, she is finished.

“Now I can come home and relax and enjoy life,” she said. “I don’t have to travel no more, and I can really be with my family, because I wasn’t really around my family a lot when I had to fulfill some dreams. So everything is just kind of like the circle of life.”