Duke hires Celtics’ Kara Lawson to lead women’s basketball team
Duke has turned to Boston Celtics assistant coach and former WNBA All-Star Kara Lawson to lead its women’s basketball program.
The school announced the hiring in a social media post Saturday, a little more than a week after Joanne P. McCallie announced she wouldn’t return for a 14th season as she entered the final year of her contract. It is the first college head-coaching job for the 39-year-old Lawson, who played under Pat Summitt at Tennessee before a long WNBA career as well as work in broadcasting.
Lawson played in the WNBA from 2003-15 and won the 2005 championship with Sacramento. She also was part of the U.S. Olympic team that won a gold medal in Beijing in 2008. She had also worked as a TV commentator for NBA and college basketball games before the Celtics hired her in June 2019.
Duke is the second Atlantic Coast Conference program this offseason to hire a woman working as an NBA assistant to be its head coach. Notre Dame hired Memphis Grizzlies assistant Niele Ivey — a former Fighting Irish player and assistant — to replace Hall of Famer Muffet McGraw in April.
Teams have truckloads of equipment arriving at the NBA headquarters in Orlando, including photos and other items to make it feel like their home facilities.
Lawson inherits a Duke program that regularly goes to the NCAA Tournament, yet hasn’t won a league title since the ACC added national powers Notre Dame (2013) and Louisville (2014) to what was already a top-flight conference.
McCallie led Duke to at least a share of the regular-season title four times and three ACC Tournament titles as well as making 10 trips to the NCAA Tournament, including four straight trips to the Elite Eight from 2010-13.
But the Blue Devils have failed to finish in the top three of the league regular-season race in four of the last seven years since the last wave of league expansion.
It’ll be up to Lawson to shake things up and give the Duke program a jolt.
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