Ivy Winfrey aka DJ Poizon Ivy, is the second female DJ in the NBA.
Her name may not sound familiar, but if you're a basketball fan, you've probably heard her work.
Ivy Winfrey, also known as DJ Poizon Ivy, knows how to make you feel the pulse of the game.
Her passion for sound and admiration for athletes led her to the decks, where she was responsible for jamming out the Dallas Mavericks' players' favourite songs and hyping them as they warm up.
“Music is so powerful,” she tells Olympics.com.
“The things I used to do, I ultimately really feel like there are some games where the energy that I brought because of how I'd fuse music into the arena was the real sixth man. I've always referred to myself in that capacity when it came to sports deejaying.”
DJ Poizon Ivy didn’t make headlines for just picking the right music in the arenas, but as the second female DJ ever in the NBA and the first Black woman to be an NBA team DJ in the league history.
“What is the factor behind me being the first? I’m more so enthralled with solving that.”
Watch the epic story of Argentina beating the Dream Team at the Olympics
From ball girl to the second female DJ in the NBA League history
“I am Ivy Winfrey, formerly known as DJ Poizon Ivy,” has been her common introduction lately. It's important to continue acknowledging her music path, which led some to call her the first female DJ in the NBA.
DJ Poizon Ivy has been at the forefront of change since joining the Dallas Mavericks in 2016 after an equally exciting stint with the Dallas Wings.
Born in Kenya, Winfrey spent her formative years in Dallas, Texas, after relocating there with her family.
Growing up, she watched a lot of NBA games with her uncles, a pastime that later influenced her decision to apply for a chance to become a ball kid with the Mavericks.
“That was my gateway into sports,” Winfrey said in a recent chat with Olympics.com from Nairobi, where she was one of the main speakers at the East Africa Gender Conference hosted by the National Olympics Committee of Kenya.
“I was indoctrinated into being a fan of basketball at a young age…and I was really intrigued by that opportunity to be close to a product that I had seen my whole life and never knew that I would be that close to.”
However, her love of sound led her to the turntables while studying at the Marquette University.
“In college, I literally had seven jobs. I was interning at the radio station in Milwaukee, working for Marquette Athletics, had my own show on the college radio station, interning for record labels. Like literally anything that could get me closer to this dream job that I didn't know what it was,” she reflected on the informal gigs that became a launchpad for her successful DJ Career.
“I started to see gaps… I started to see that the athletic community highly regarded, the music community. All the athletes always want to go to concerts, so I was the plug there. I found myself deejaying in my kitchen. And then three months later, deejaying on a stage with 30,000 people. So I’m like, ‘I have this deejay career going and I still love sports, well, how do I make these two things work?’”
What's it like to be an DJ in the NBA? 'Music...is a different kind of power'
Winfrey, who also interned at the Milwaukee Bucks, found a perfect fit for her strengths and skills in a role she believes supercharged her career. A stint at a youth camp run by WNBA star and Olympic champion Skylar Diggins-Smith fueled her path.
“It was my work with Skylar and being her deejay and the deejay for her ‘Shoot 4 the Sky’ basketball camp, that ultimately gave me one of the biggest platforms that I needed. My career was birthed on the shoulders of that woman.”
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Starting in 2015, she was behind all the sounds you heard when entering the Dallas Arena as the DJ for the Wings, before joining the Mavericks as the first-ever female team DJ. The first female DJ in the NBA was Emily Thornhill, aka DJ Thornstryker, who worked with the Detroit Pistons in 2014.
“It's a different kind of power…” she recalled on how for years she used music to influence the players, fans, and even the staff’s trajectory with what she played.
“Music is key. Sound is key. I think now more than ever, I realize how powerful that was and how much I enjoyed it, too. I think it's a language. And not only that, I played for different stakeholders, I knew the songs of favourite ushers in the arena or security guards,” the 34-year-old takes pride in being one of the first DJs to bring Afrobeat to the American basketball arena.
She paused, reflecting on the thought, before continuing.
“It goes back to, our point guard, J.J Barea, who is from Puerto Rico...So I knew he loved reggaeton, and so I would play him reggae warmups and that's what actually led me into actually thinking If I can play reggaeton, I can play African music, and that ultimately led me to Slovenian music [for Luka Doncic] …”
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“I want to be a mirror through which a lot of women saw, accepted and found themselves”
During her time in Dallas, Winfrey was not only in charge of matching songs to particular players or situations, she also had to curate and cue sound effects for entire basketball games, a “superpower” that further solidified her role as a trailblazer.
Her career highlights soared to include spinning at six NBA All-Star games.
“When I first started my career with the Mavs, I had a lot of goals. One of them was to be an All-star deejay, one time. So here we are six times later. I've programmed every event there is at All-Star, not only as a deejay, but a host.”
DJing at the NBA-All Star weekend made her the first female to stand behind the decks. But she shies away from focussing on being the first woman in a male-dominated DJ industry.
“There's that factor, But I just hope that it's all a lot of pressure. I just don't focus on it,” she stressed.
“Because when you're the first, you can't mess it up for other people. You can't lament the fact that these spaces look the way they do, you have to be the change they see.”
After scaling to new heights in the NBA league history, she continues her role as an in-game entertainer but is more drawn now to mentoring young women and advocating for issues affecting women, a purpose fuelled by her ‘full-time job,’ being a mum to her 12-year-old daughter Kyani, who is often by her side.
“I'm a mum first. Even when I introduce myself really typically, ‘Hi, I’m Kyani’s mum!’ because it’s what I am, that is what I do full-time. You see me, she's somewhere behind me,” said Winfrey.
“I want to be that person who was able to be a mirror through which a lot of women saw themselves and accepted themselves and then found themselves and then became themselves. If I could be a catalyst for that continually, I am fine!”
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