Multiple teams in the WNBA are now searching for a new head coach, and the pool of potential candidates should stretch far and wide. Perhaps even to Durham, NC.
The head coach of Duke's women's basketball team, Kara Lawson, has built up quite the resume. As WNBA teams like the New York Liberty and Los Angeles Sparks look for their next coach, it would be impossible not to consider Lawson.
Given the NBA buzz around her counterpart on the men's side, Jon Scheyer, it would be quite fun to see Lawson beat him to the pros.
Kara Lawson is an ideal coaching candidate
If a WNBA team is building a checklist of what to look for in a WNBA head coach, it would likely be ideal if a championship-winning coach still in their prime was available. That's why pipe dreams such as the Liberty luring Becky Hammon away from the Las Vegas Aces are being tossed around the rumor mill.
Other than that, however, Kara Lawson may check every other box. A college star who played for coaching legend Pat Summitt at the University of Tennessee, Lawson had a twelve-year playing career, winning a WNBA title with the Sacramento Monarchs along the way.
After a stretch in broadcasting, Lawson then joined the Boston Celtics as an assistant coach, learning from one of the great minds in the game, Brad Stevens. In 2020, she was hired as the head coach of the Duke Blue Devils women's basketball team, which she has built into a perennial Top-15 team despite rarely having truly elite talent.
She also has experience with WNBA players, as Lawson is also the head coach of the USA Women's Olympic Basketball Team, which she coached to the gold medal at this year's World Cup. She has proven herself able to both connect to stars and to hold them accountable.
Lawson is young, just 45 years old, but she is accomplished. She has experience in the WNBA but also from other domains, and her coaching mentors are solid. In short, she checks every box but the one where she has actually been successful in the WNBA before.
Lawson will likely be hired to the WNBA soon
It may be this season that Lawson answers the WNBA call. It could be next year, or sometime soon. By all accounts she loves her job at Duke, and few places provide as much support to their coaches than Duke, but it seems likely that the WNBA will eventually convince her to make the leap.
Her mirror on the men's side, Jon Scheyer, flirted with going to the NBA just this past summer. The Dallas Mavericks interviewed him and, potentially, even offered him the job. He elected to stay at Duke, to continue building toward a championship. His leap could be soon, however.
Kara Lawson might just beat him to it. She is too good of a candidate and too successful of a coach not to be closely examined, and those who are looking will probably be convinced of her ability.
It's only a matter of time.
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