Kara Lawson's Red-White-and-Duke-Blue
The Duke coach stayed out of politics this election year, but will she be the head coach of Team USA in 2028?
The start of the 2024-25 college basketball season and Election Day are both next week, which means I’m going to be very, very busy. A lot of folks reading this might know me for my work on covering women’s college basketball and other sports, but I also do quite a bit behind the scenes at North Carolina Public Radio helping our reporters cover politics in the state and the upcoming elections.
But with college basketball and politics on a collision course for next week, I’m thinking a lot about Kara Lawson.
You might remember, back in 2020, before she had even coached her first game for the Duke Blue Devils, Lawson appeared at campaign rallies in North Carolina for the Democratic ticket, standing alongside Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at two different events. This was incredibly interesting to me for a few reasons, chief among them was because it’s rare that we see college coaches publicly declare their political affiliations, take sides in elections or endorse candidates. If you remember, way back in 2008, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill went out of its way to clarify that Tar Heels’ men’s basketball coach Roy Williams was not endorsing Barack Obama after the presidential candidate had been photographed playing pickup with the Heels at the Smith Center.
More than a decade later, here Lawson was, being quoted by Biden at a rally in Durham.
I tried to talk to Lawson about this four years ago, but she declined a request I made through Duke’s sports information department. Still, I wrote about it anyways, weaving it into a story for WUNC about how Lawson was part of a next generation of coaches in women’s college basketball – not just someone who talked publicly about politics and activism, but someone who didn’t take the typical path into becoming Duke’s head coach. Lawson was never a college assistant. She played in the WNBA, worked at ESPN, and then was an assistant coach for the Boston Celtics before parlaying those varied collective experiences into the top job for the Blue Devils’ women’s basketball program.
Over the past four years, she would keep proving that she was different than most other coaches in this sport. Duke was the first program at the Power Five level to cancel their 2020-21 season amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. She publicly challenged the ACC over an incident where she claimed a men’s ball was used in a game between her Blue Devils and Florida State, forcing the conference to essentially call her a liar in a statement. She has also been the only coach in the ACC that hasn’t allowed TV broadcasters to watch shootarounds, a common courtesy coaches give to folks from ESPN and elsewhere to help them tell the story of a game. And while many coaches over the last few seasons – as viewership in women’s college basketball has boomed – have talked a lot about growing this sport and their role in it, Lawson doesn’t really see that as one of her duties. “I don’t think of it that way. I don’t know that I have that much power to grow the game,” she said at the 2023 ACC Tip-Off. “To say I’m growing the game, I don’t know that I’m doing that.”
Simply put, Lawson wants us to believe that she’s at Duke to win games and not much else. And certainly, she’s had success as the leader of the Blue Devils. In 2023, Duke finished second in the ACC and hosted NCAA Tournament games during its opening weekend. Last season, with a super young core, Duke upset Ohio State on its way to the Sweet 16. This season, with four starters returning combined with an impressive freshmen class headlined by Toby Fournier, Lawson’s Blue Devils should contend for a top 16 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Still, with the election approaching, I kept thinking about Lawson’s 2020, and her speaking at rallies supporting Harris and Biden. With Harris leading the Democratic ticket this year, I wondered, would Lawson publicly support her again?
So, I asked Lawson about it at ACC Tip-Off, the conference’s annual media days in Charlotte.
“I haven't been asked to do anything this time,” Lawson replied when I asked if she would appear at campaign events this year.
That exchange was back on Oct. 8. And indeed, with just days to go until the election, Lawson hasn’t been seen headlining any campaign events for Harris and Tim Walz – the latter of whom stopped by Cameron Indoor Stadium and shook hands with men’s coach Jon Scheyer on-camera, but not Lawson. Perhaps that changes Saturday when Harris is hosting a rally in Charlotte, but I’m not counting on it.
As I thought about Lawson, the election, basketball and the Red-White-and-Blue of it all, another thought kept creeping into my mind: Kara Lawson is going to be the head coach of Team USA someday, right?
It’s a theory I laid out on the debut episode of a new podcast I’m co-hosting with Mia O’Brien, simply titled, “The Women’s Basketball Podcast.”
As I explain in that clip, Lawson has countless connections to Team USA and USA Basketball, an organization that – if we’re to believe WNBA All-Star Arike Ogunbowale – is deeply political and has its favorites. And with the facts in front of us, one could easily argue that Lawson is one of them.
Consider this:
Lawson was a star on the Team USA squad that won the Olympic gold in 2008.
USA Basketball gave Lawson her first coaching job, hiring her to coach the 3x3 team in 2017 ahead of the 2021 Olympics, where she guided the squad to a gold medal.
She was an assistant coach for Cheryl Reeve at the 2022 FIBA World Cup and the 2024 Olympics, and she was the lead scout for the gold medal game against France.
“It was fun to be in a game that mattered, probably the game that matters more than any other game in our sport, and to have it be close and to try and help your team win it, and then ultimately be able to win it, was awesome,” Lawson said of the gold medal game in Paris.
And then there are the Duke connections. Blue Devils’ athletics director Nina King was just named to the USA Basketball Board of Directors, and legendary Duke men’s coach Mike Krzyzewski – who can still wield influence – coached the men’s Olympic team for arguably its most successful era, winning gold medals in 2008, 2012 and 2016.
It’s also worth noting that, typically – Geno Auriemma’s six-year tenure being the outlier – the coaches of the U.S. women’s basketball team serve just one Olympic cycle. It’s also worth noting that, aside from Reeve, Van Chancellor and Anne Donovan, the job has been held by a college coach, not one from the professional ranks.
One more bullet of additional ammo for my theory: The last time the Olympics were held in Los Angeles, California, was in 1984. The coach the U.S. national team that year was Pat Summitt, Lawson’s mentor and college coach. And wouldn’t it make for a great story to see Lawson following in Summitt’s footsteps more than 40 years later?
Lawson, to be sure, is invested in USA Basketball and will continue to be involved as long as they ask her. What role that is in remains to be seen.
“You serve at the pleasure of the federation. That’s how it works. Consistent with the last 27 years of my life, if they ask me to do it, I’m going to do it. I’ve enjoyed all my time with the federation, whether it was playing, serving on committees, coaching,” Lawson said. “That's something that I've just loved being a part of. So yeah, I enjoy it. I enjoy the relationships with the players.”
If a sportsbook ran a line on it, I’d bet on Lawson being on the sidelines for the 2028 Olympics.
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Hey y’all. I’m reviving the newsletter.
This is mostly going to be a link dump of all the things I’ve written and content I’ve produced in a given week going forward, but occasionally I’ll also write a column like the one above on Kara Lawson, or a notebook or some stray thoughts.
Thankfully, I now have a few outlets where I can write about women’s college basketball regularly. So, for most of the past two seasons, this has just been a space for me to list all the work I’ve done during March Madness. You can check those out here and here. I’ll probably be paying my own way to the Final Four again this season with freelance work.
I spent most of the 2023-24 campaign following around the North Carolina Tar Heels for a book, and while that was a lot of fun and incredibly interesting, I’m really looking forward to this season and widening my coverage scope of the sport. Speaking of the book, I’ve submitted the manuscript to my publisher. I’ll keep y’all informed of updates and a release date when I have them.
Anyways, here’s some links to get y’all ready for the season.
At WUNC, I talked to UNC-Asheville coach Tynesha Lewis about what her team has endured amidst Hurrican Helene. They spent most of October living out of a Charlotte hotel room and practicing wherever they could.
For The Next, I pieced together an ACC preview that’s north of 5,000 words with notes, facts, quotes and takeaways on all 18 teams. I also hopped on the Locked On WBB Podcast to preview the ACC too.
Also at The Next, I dug into the coaching situation at Morehead State, where Cayla Petree is seemingly out after three seasons. The university is being quiet about as to why.
For the wire service Field Level Media, I wrote about who in women’s college basketball will fill the void of stardom left by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. There are several candidates, led by Hannah Hidalgo and JuJu Watkins.
At USA Today’s For The Win, I broke down my preseason AP Top 25 ballot.
Not Basketball…
For WUNC, I pieced together candidate profiles in the statewide races for agriculture commissioner and secretary of state.
At USA Today’s For The Win, I’ve been writing the weekly college football watchability column. This week, SMU vs. Pitt and ACC Chaos leads us off.
Also Read…
Two recommendations from the Raleigh News & Observer: Jadyn Watson-Fisher on Aziaha James and her brother, and Andrew Carter on Helene’s impact on western North Carolina.
The Baltimore Banner continues to tell important stories in Maryland.
Mitchell Northam is an award-winning journalist based in North Carolina. He grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and is a graduate of Salisbury University. He is a digital producer at WUNC and a writer at USA Today’s For The Win. His work has also been featured at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Orlando Sentinel, the Baltimore Banner, NCAA.com, the Next, the Associated Press, Pittsburgh Sports Now and elsewhere. He is a member of FWAA and USBWA and is an AP Top 25 voter for women’s college basketball. He’s on Twitter @primetimeMitch. More of his work can be found at MuckRack.