Lawson heading to Duke
Celtics trying to stay humble in the bubble
Kara Lawson signed on for her first coaching job as a Celtics assistant last summer, and the former Tennessee and WNBA star’s rise continues to be swift.
The 39-year-old former point guard accepted the women’s head coaching position at Duke Saturday, making her the first Black head coach in the program’s history.
Lawson immediately made her presence felt through her individual work with the Celtics’ large crop of rookies.
Duke made the move official with a social media announcement featuring Lawson in a blue dress, of course. She will replace Joanne McCallie.
Jayson Tatum, the one-year Blue Devil clearly happy with the choice, tweeted, “Welcome to the family!”
Managing minutes
Don’t expect to see a full ration of Kemba Walker during the eight-game seeding round. The point guard’s precious knees considered, he won’t take on a full minutes load until the playoffs begin, according to his coach.
“Kemba is more of a deal that we want to utilize this time while we have everybody together and while we’re in these spaces to strengthen his knee,” said Brad Stevens. “The biggest thing that we don’t want to do is go through a typical training camp, which is usually a ramp-up session for most people, to get to where they need to be, for him we need to make it a ramp-up sessions so he doesn’t have setbacks once we start playing.
“He will start playing under limited minutes, most likely. Who knows what that means, but the goal is not to be limited once the playoffs come around. But certainly I think it’s very reasonable to expect early on, scrimmages, and at least in the first week or so of seeding games, that he’ll be limited.”
‘One goal, man’
Jaylen Brown wasn’t merely speaking for himself this week when he said now’s not the time to complain about the bubble, or the quality of the food, or anything else in Orlando.
His teammates are clearly of the same mind.
“We got one goal, man. Just go out there and get better. That’s the goal. We don’t worry about anything else,” Enes Kanter said during a media Zoom conference Saturday.
“Actually we had a meeting yesterday and we just said we need to stay humble, stay hungry and just go out there and do our job,” said the Celtics center. “Don’t worry about anything else. It’s just us against the world. So we need to just go out there and focus on what we need to focus on and give 100% and just go out there and have fun. We should be blessed that we’re finally around each other, with my teammates and my coaches and we actually are finally playing basketball. So if you ask any of the Celtics players they’re not worried about anything else but just going out there, playing basketball and having fun.
“I know everybody is right thinking about the No. 1 seed, No. 2 seed, whatever. I feel like we have enough talent to beat every team on every floor,” he said. “The only thing I would care about is if my guys are healthy or not. Right now, everybody is healthy, everybody is going out, just trying to get in the best shape. I feel like, man, Celtics can beat every team on every floor, so we are not worrying about who we are going to face, or who are we not going to face. We’re just going out there and just show the world because, beginning of the season, man, there was so many haters out there.
“There was so many doubters out there that were saying that the Celtics were not going to be the best. Celtics are not going to do it this year. I feel like we’ve proved them wrong already but our job is not done yet. We just need to go out there and finish the job and show the whole world we got what we need.”
Staying safe
All of the NBA’s bubble precautions considered, the Celtics feel as safe as can be expected from the coronavirus.
“I think with regard to the coronavirus and how you compartmentalize being here and trying to get the season restarted, and recognizing what’s going on around the country, I think the NBA is doing everything they can to mitigate our risk but we all understand that there is risk,” said Stevens. “Certainly, I’m watching what’s going on around the rest of the country with great concern and certainly we’re all keeping a close eye on it.”