There were easier and more sentimental choices for Duke, but neither was Kara Lawson
There was an easy, safe choice for Duke. Gail Goestenkors, still only 57, would have been a turnkey replacement at the school she took to its greatest heights in women’s basketball before leaving for Texas.
There was an easy, sentimental choice. Lindsey Harding, a Duke legend, currently working as a skills development coach in the NBA after a long international and WNBA career.
Either would have been fine for the Blue Devils. Neither, though, is Kara Lawson.
There’s nothing Goestenkors or Harding can do about that. Neither has the full package Lawson brings: her resume, her star power, her stratospheric stature in the game.
Duke athletic director Kevin White really couldn’t go wrong, but he really got this one right — a belated boost for a women’s basketball program he let stagnate during the prolonged and lingering tenure of Joanne P. McCallie, even extending her contract at a time when the direction of the program was anything but certain, and was indeed headed toward turmoil and irrelevance.
Whether Lawson can correct that trajectory remains uncertain — it always is — but rarely does any hiring meet with such unanimous acclaim from nearly every quarter as Lawson’s has, especially a 39-year-old first-time head coach jumping out of the NBA’s coronavirus bubble and straight into the ACC, which has become the most competitive conference in the women’s game.
She arrives from the Boston Celtics, where she spent a year working alongside Brad Stevens, but she’ll be instantly recognizable to an entire generation of recruits from her work for ESPN on college, NBA and WNBA broadcasts, and is the latest college coach to emerge from the orbit of the late Pat Summit at Tennessee.
“Kara has a peerless track record of success,” White said. “If you don’t know that at this point, you’ve been living under a rock.”
Expectations will be high. McCallie was never able to get Duke to a Final Four in 12 completed seasons, and the program was in a slow and steady descent since the Blue Devils’ last ACC title in 2013. Even if the ACC pool got deeper with the addition of Notre Dame and Louisville, there was no excuse for missing the NCAA tournament in two of the past four seasons. Still, her contract was extended multiple times, most recently in 2017 despite an internal investigation into potential player mistreatment in 2016 amid a never-ending tide of transfers.
There’s some cleanup to do, but Duke’s reputation and history of success speaks for itself, which is why a rising star like Lawson found it a mutual fit.
“I talked to a number of former players, maybe two dozen, just trying to introduce myself to them,” Lawson said. “A lot of them are my friends, so those were fun calls. But some were straight-up cold calls, talking to people, trying to share my vision of the program.”
Lawson arrives with experience in everything but coaching — as an elite player in college and the pros, as a broadcaster, as an NBA coach and Stevens mentee — but all of it has been designed to prepare her for this opportunity, challenges carefully selected for their growth potential.
“The diversity of my experiences is my strength,” Lawson said.
There were easier choices, with closer ties to the school. Duke went outside the family to get what it hopes is a rising star.
This story was originally published July 13, 2020 at 2:52 PM with the headline "There were easier and more sentimental choices for Duke, but neither was Kara Lawson."
