“They could not take anybody better”: People in the WNBA are thrilled Kara Lawson is an NBA coach
On July 3, the Boston Celtics hired Kara Lawson, a Washington Wizards television analyst and 2005 WNBA champion, as an assistant coach. Lawson is part of a rapidly-growing contingent of female NBA coaches that includes Becky Hammon, Jenny Boucek, Lindsay Gottlieb, and Niele Ivey.
On her eponymous podcast, Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve explained the significance of Lawson’s hire: “Women in men’s sports is a place that we just haven’t been all that welcome. It’s the only place that we’re not leading. You know, we can lead in everything else and we can be the president of the United States and [we] can lead universities and [we] can be CEOs, but to this point, we haven’t led men’s sports.”
Starting this week, Lawson is poised to help break the glass ceiling for women in both broadcasting and coaching. To hear her former teammates and coaches tell it, she is the perfect person for the job.
The reaction around the WNBA
As a reporter, it’s rare for me to approach a player, mention the topic I’d like to discuss, and have her gleefully yell, “Oh, man, my homie!” But that was Renee Montgomery’s reaction — on the court before a game, no less — when I asked about her former Connecticut Sun teammate. In fact, nearly every time I talked to a player or coach for this story, his or her face lit up at the first mention of Lawson.
Players’ and coaches’ reactions to the news were mostly a mix of excitement and pride, but not surprise. “I think it was only a matter of time before an NBA team gave her that opportunity,” Washington Mystics associate head coach Eric Thibault said earlier this summer. Thibault worked with Lawson in Connecticut from 2010 through 2012 and in Washington in 2014 and 2015. He added, “That’s just going to be such a good opportunity for her and I think for the Celtics because … she’s as smart as they come.” Washington Mystics center Latoya Sanders agreed: “I’m not surprised. Kara has always been a student of the game, and she always had great insight … she’s a great commentator too, so it all goes with it.” And Mystics forward Emma Meesseman had even higher praise for her former point guard: “They could not take anybody better than her for that job.”
Lawson was a standout teammate …
Lawson played in the WNBA for 13 seasons and averaged 9.8 points and 2.5 assists per game. Her former teammates described her as easy to play with, and the statistics bear that out. In her final six seasons in Connecticut and Washington, she had an assist rate below 20% just once and a usage rate above 20% just once. That means that when Lawson was on the court, she generally assisted on more than her share of teammates’ baskets and “used” relatively few possessions herself by shooting or turning the ball over. “She’s a point guard’s point guard,” Montgomery said.
Washington’s current point guard, Natasha Cloud, learned a lot from Lawson as a rookie in 2015. “Kara was a great vet to me,” Cloud reflected. “… She was always open to spreading her knowledge, whether it was to me or other players on the team. … I really learned how to be a pro from her, whether it was her coming in two hours early to get her body ready or staying two hours after to get her body ready for the next day. … So whether she realizes it or not, just her example day in and day out was huge for me in my career.”
Lawson also taught Meesseman a lot in their two seasons together in 2014 and 2015. Not only were they “warmup buddies,” because they typically took their time and brought up the rear, but Lawson “was like our coach on the court. I think she knew certain plays better than our coach. And she’s so smart. I think she’s the smartest player, like basketball mind, I’ve ever played with.” That’s high praise considering that Meesseman has played with the likes of Kristi Toliver and Elena Delle Donne in Washington and Courtney Vandersloot, Kayla McBride, and Brittney Griner overseas with UMMC Ekaterinburg.
Meesseman, a native of Belgium, also said that watching Lawson interact with the coaching staff taught her an important lesson about coaching and communication in American basketball. “She was the first player that I could see, okay, you can be the coach on the court and you can, if you have a good relationship with the coach, then the coach [gives you more freedom]. … she showed me that I can share my thoughts with coaches. … I was surprised by that.” Four years later, Meesseman is confident and empowered to share her thoughts with teammates and coaches, and her contributions on both ends of the court were a big reason why Washington was able to beat Las Vegas in the WNBA semifinals.
… And a coach’s dream
The father-son duo of Mike and Eric Thibault were at very different points in their careers when they began coaching Lawson, but her professionalism, competitiveness, and intelligence left a lasting impression on both of them. Mike Thibault first coached Lawson on the 2008 Olympic team, after he had worked in the NBA for nearly two decades and been a head coach in Connecticut since 2003. (He is currently in his seventh season as head coach of the Washington Mystics.) Lawson joined Thibault in Connecticut in 2010, and he signed her again in Washington in 2014. Never mind that she was 33 years old then and had only played nine games in 2013 due to injury. “You love coaching players who are complete students of the game, who are all-in,” Thibault said. “[She was an] unbelievable competitor. … Anytime you can get a player that’s that competitive, that smart, a great shooter, and [has] a great work ethic, you want to coach those kind of players.”
Eric Thibault, on the other hand, celebrated his 21st birthday during the 2008 Olympics and started working with Lawson two years later, when she signed with the Sun and he was helping the team with scouting and individual workouts. “She made me have to be prepared,” Thibault reflected. “I knew if I was gonna go talk to Kara about an opponent, or about our offense, I knew I had to have my stuff together. Because … she would’ve [already] spent time watching film and knowing the game plan.” He added that, unlike many players, she could both analyze her own performance and understand what the entire team needed in that moment. “[On] road trips, we’d just sit and talk about our team or stuff that she wanted to work on or stuff that she just saw and the bigger picture. … She was just a good sounding board.”
Phoenix head coach Sandy Brondello has coached in the WNBA since 2005 and game-planned against Lawson for over a decade. Talking about Lawson before a game against Washington in July, Brondello used the present tense, as if waiting for Lawson to take the court for the Mystics again: “She always moves without the ball, and they’re the hardest … players to guard. She can shoot it, she can take it off the dribble. She’s a high-IQ player, so you … [have] to have a scout for her.” Brondello called Lawson “just a big-time player” in the WNBA and also praised her performance in the Olympics, where she averaged a team-high 3.0 assists per game and led the team with 15 points in the gold-medal game. “She really helped them win that medal,” Brondello said.
Lawson’s evolution from player to broadcaster to coach
Many of Lawson’s best attributes are often associated with coaching, but several of her former teammates, including Montgomery, said a potential future in coaching “wasn’t something we talked about.” However, to Meesseman, her warmup buddy’s future was obvious. “She didn’t really have to say that because it was in her. She just did it,” Meesseman explained. “She was speaking in timeouts, in practice — she’s a born coach, to me. I would be more surprised that she would not be [working in] basketball right now and not coach … That would surprise me way more than her doing it.”
Eric and Mike Thibault said that the subject has come up occasionally, often because of other people speculating about whether Lawson would coach one day. That speculation increased when Lawson coached USA 3x3 teams to gold medals in international events in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Mike Thibault said the 3x3 coaching was ideal in the short term as a way to continue broadcasting but also try to “quench her thirst” for coaching. But “long-term it’s a good move” for Lawson to coach for the Celtics, he said. Eric Thibault added that Lawson’s job with the Wizards “was sort of a dream job at the time” for the Alexandria, Virginia, native, “… so I know it was hard for her to leave that, but when you get an opportunity with the Celtics, Brad Stevens is the head coach, they’re going to let you have a lot of say, I think the timing was just right.”
What Lawson will bring to the Celtics
The Celtics have assembled a lot of talent on the court and in the front office, but people around the WNBA expect Lawson to further elevate the Celtics’ game. “She has a coach’s way of looking at things,” Mike Thibault explained. “She’s very analytical, very organized, very dedicated. When she does something, she’s all in. So I think she’ll do a great job.”
Sanders highlighted Lawson’s offensive knowledge, explaining that Lawson was always “[able] to make the game easier for herself and also for her teammates. So I think she’ll be able to give them tactical stuff on the offensive end just to improve their game and … get easy points.” Lawson will work as hard as anyone, Sanders said, and that plus her intelligence is a strong one-two punch.
Montgomery shared several traits that she expects Lawson to bring to the NBA, including “a burst of energy and positivity,” her court vision, her preparation, and “[an] outlook on how to be successful.” She recalled that, when they were teammates in Connecticut, Lawson always knew exactly where Connecticut was in the standings near the end of the season, what its odds of winning specific matchups were, and what the team needed to do to position itself favorably. “She just breaks it all down,” Montgomery said. “Like, she has a whole vision and a plan, which is why I’m not surprised at all that she got a super dope coaching job.”
Lawson retired as a player after the 2015 season, finishing her career with one WNBA title, one All-Star nod, an Olympic gold medal, and two Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Awards. In Mike Thibault’s estimation, she could have played longer if not for nagging back and knee injuries — not to mention her ascendant broadcasting career, which offered an appealing alternative.
Four years later, Lawson’s coaching career is similarly ready for launch, and the WNBA community could not be happier. Brondello called Lawson’s hire “fantastic” and tied it to the broader changes that Reeve mentioned on her podcast: “With every [hire] — Lindsey Harding, Becky Hammon, [and others] — I think it’s great that the NBA is looking to [the] WNBA and, obviously, former players … basketball is basketball. … She’ll be great at it.” And Cloud was deeply appreciative of what Lawson’s hire would mean for her and other players who might coach one day. Lawson is “a pioneer of our league,” Cloud said, “… another badass woman that played in our league that etched her way into a man’s world [and is] opening doors for the rest of us.”
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