Lawson finds fit with Celts
Eager to tackle new challenge
Kara Lawson won’t try to mimic the accent because she understands, unlike the failed cast of actors in Boston-based films who have attempted to do it, that she can’t bend and distort vowels like the locals.
But the Celtics’ newest assistant coach had a very Boston kind of moment this week — a funny welcome from a stranger on a bicycle — and wanted to tell the story after yesterday’s summer league practice.
“It’s intense here. I was walking home from the practice facility. I try to get out before the sun goes down so I can see what’s around when it’s not dark,” Lawson said. “And I was walking over some bridge over the Mass Pike and this guy on his bike rides by and he turns around and comes back. And he’s like, ‘Yo, Kara. Welcome to Boston. Go Celtics.’ And he turns his bike around and keeps riding. So that was pretty neat.”
Such is the nature of one of the nation’s most frenzied sports towns. Lawson’s celebrity has preceded her. She’s not only the point guard who played in three Final Fours at Tennessee, and won a WNBA title in Sacramento in 2005 as the highlight of a 12-season professional career, she won two Olympic gold medals and built her stock as a reporter and analyst from Washington to Sacramento to ESPN.
She is the latest in a wave of former WNBA players who have joined NBA coaching staffs since San Antonio hired Becky Hammon in 2014.
“To go from, I don’t know, age 22 to age 36 and never get a phone call to now getting a lot of phone calls — that’s, again, my small sample size, just using my individual experience — there’s been a lot of progress, at least from teams reaching out and trying to see if different women are a good fit for their group,” she said.
As Lawson admits, some ultimately didn’t want her. Or she didn’t want them. But there was something about Brad Stevens and his system that convinced the 38-yearold to finally make the jump. Joining a team with a solid playoff, big-game pedigree was important to her as well.
“I think fit is really important,” she said. “I think it’s important when you’re a player, I think it’s really important when you’re a coach, there’s a lot of similarities to being a player and a coach in that sense in terms of fit. For me this was a good fit.
“I wanted to go somewhere where I’d be challenged, I wanted to go somewhere where I’d be allowed to coach, and I wanted to go to an organization that was going to be playing in big games to be able to get a sense of that last frontier of coaching which is being able to do it in pressure situations in the regular season and the playoffs,” Lawson said.
“When I talked to Brad in a number of different conversations, it felt from a personality standpoint that he was going to be a good fit for me as I start off doing this. I think it’s important when you start off as a rookie that you’re surrounded by a good group, a knowledgeable group, and a good leader, and Brad checked all those boxes for me.”
The two were already familiar with each other, dating back to Lawson’s time with ESPN.
“I just got a phone call from Brad, or a text from Brad I guess, out of the blue for me,” she said. “I knew Brad having covered his teams. I covered his team at Butler when I worked at ESPN, obviously covered him in the playoffs a couple of times with ESPN radio, but yeah I just got a text from him, he asked if I had a few minutes to chat, and that’s what started the process.
“The last couple of years I’ve talked to a number of teams, typically it’s someone on their team reaching out, whether it’s the coach, or the GM, or the team president,” Lawson added. “Usually, at least the last couple of years, questioning my desire to be in the league at some capacity. It hasn’t always been coaching, sometimes it’s been front office. I don’t want to say I knew it was that but based on past precedent I thought it would be something about a job.”
Part of her excitement now is the link she will have to a young team, including intriguing talents in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Then there’s 29-year-old Kemba Walker, though this being the moratorium, Lawson understands she can’t talk about the Celtics’ newest star.
“I’m trying not to get fined,” she said with a laugh. “I’m not allowed to talk about free agents. I can say that there’s some potential people that I would be very excited to work with. I think just how versatile the roster could be, that there’s a lot of youth on the team, obviously we have our four draft picks, and then also with Jayson and Jaylen still being younger players.
“When you’re a young player and you’re trying to learn the NBA and trying to grow or different roles, I saw that as an opportunity to make a difference on this staff. I mean, everyone on this staff is elite, we all bring different perspectives. My perspective that I try to bring is I’ve been there, I’ve won championships, I’ve played almost any role that you can possibly play on a team.
“I’ve been a rookie where I didn’t play a lot, I’ve been a point guard where I started every game and we made it to the conference finals, and I’ve been a sixth man, more years than I wanted to be, so I can relate when you get pushed to that sixth position,” Lawson added. “And it sucks when you come in every day and the starters are in green and you’re in white, and it’s the worst, but you’ve gotta deal with it and you gotta be a pro about it. Most of the things that they experience, emotionally, most of them, I’ve experienced, too. So I can not just understand but I can relate to their ups and downs.”