Tulsa (Oklahoma), March 11 (DPA) Disgraced sprinter Marion Jones signed a free-agent contract Wednesday to play basketball in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) with the Tulsa Shock.

The 34-year-old was stripped of the 100m, 200m, 4x400m Olympic gold medals she won at Sydney as well as her 4x100m and long jump bronze medals after admitting in 2007 that she was using forbidden doping substances at the time of the Games in 2000, as part of the Balco lab scandal.

Jones, who announced last November that she intended making a sporting comeback in basketball, played the sport in college for North Carolina and won a national college championship with the Tar Heels in 1994.

'The WNBA players are the greatest womens basketball players in the world. I welcome my chance to play alongside them,' Jones said at a press conference in Tulsa.

In 2008, Jones spent nearly six months in prison after pleading guilty to perjury after admitted lying to federal investigators about her use of performance-enhancing drugs.