DURHAM, N.C. — Kara Lawson was in the vast and sprawling Atlanta airport when she got a call from a friend and former teammate whom she affectionately calls “Birdie.”
The wider women’s basketball-viewing public knows her better as Sue Bird — a five-time Olympic gold medalist, a four-time WNBA champion, the league’s all-time leader in assists and games played, and an inductee this year into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
But Bird now has another title too. Earlier this year, she was named as the U.S. women’s national team managing director. That meant hiring a coach to lead the prestigious team through its next cycle — which includes the 2026 FIBA World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics — is up to her.
And that’s what Bird was calling Lawson about.
The Duke coach had a feeling what the topic of conversation might be when she picked up her phone.
“I knew that they would be naming a coach soon. Did I know it would be me? No. Did I know that I was probably a candidate? Yes,” Lawson said. “It was probably not the most ideal place to get that call.”
Tuesday in Cameron Indoor Stadium was a more appropriate setting, where Bird presented Lawson with a red Team USA jersey with the No. 28 on it, officially naming her as the next head coach of the U.S. national team for women’s basketball.
A video narrated by Mike Krzyzewski introduced Lawson, and the crowd was littered with basketball VIPs and those meaningful to the Duke women’s head coach — from high school teammates to Tennessee great Tamika Catchings, from her mother and sisters to Boston Celtics president Brad Stevens, as well as Blue Devils athletic director Nina King and ACC commissioner Jim Phillips.
When she approached the microphone to speak to the folks assembled, Lawson had to pause for about 30 seconds. She brushed her hair aside, took a deep breath, pinched the bridge of her nose, fought back tears and collected herself. She pulled out one of the three tissues she carried in the pocket of her navy blazer.
“The game just got started and I already need a timeout,” Lawson said, drawing an empathetic laugh from the crowd. She then stoically named each of the 12 coaches that preceded her in leading Team USA, beginning with Billie Moore and finishing with Cheryl Reeve.
“It’s incredible. I mean, it’s the No. 1 job in our country, right? At least it is to me. I guess everyone can have their opinion,” Lawson said with a smile. “To me, to lead your country’s national team is the best job there is, and to be selected for. That’s a great feeling — the belief and the trust the Federation has in me, and Sue specifically, is awesome.”
The 44-year-old Lawson takes over the team — which has won eight consecutive Olympic gold medals and four straight World Cups — during a time of transition. Bird is the first person to hold the title of managing director for the squad, and she and Lawson are tasked with guiding it through a potential era of change. While in-their-prime stars like A’ja Wilson and Napheesa Collier figure to be part of the plans for 2028, longtime mainstays like Diana Taurasi have aged out of the team and other elder veterans could get squeezed out as young rising talents like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Paige Bueckers and Aliyah Boston fight for spots on the roster.
Bird, who will have the ultimate say in roster selection, believes that Lawson is up for the task of leading whatever players are on the squad to another Olympic gold.
“When I thought about the qualities that we were going to need for our head coach, I looked for someone who understood the experience of having USA on their chest. In Kara’s case, it came in the form of a jersey as well as a polo,” Bird said, a nod to Lawson’s tenure as both a player and coach for the national team. “Her international experience is unmatched.”
Because of her resume, coaching bonafides and connections to Team USA, Lawson has long made sense to be the next coach of the national team. For her, this appointment is the latest chapter in her long journey with Team USA, an organization she’s been part of since she was a teenager.
In 1998, Lawson wore the stars-and-stripes for the first time in the World Youth Games. Since that debut, she’s collected 13 gold medals in various competitions as a player and coach, including winning the Olympic gold as a player in 2008 — a tournament that saw Lawson set the Team USA record for 3-point percentage, as she shot a 57.1 percent clip from deep range in that tournament.
That U.S. team that won the gold in Beijing marked the first — and only — time that Bird and Lawson shared the court as teammates. Bird recalled first learning about Lawson by reading about her playing football in Sports Illustrated For Kids. They then battled in youth basketball, as rivals in college at Tennessee and UConn, and then in the WNBA. Bird remembers she and her youth teammates referring to Lawson simply by her hairstyle back in those days: “Who’s guarding pigtails?”
But Bird also recalls being in awe watching Lawson’s determination in the 2008 gold medal game, where she shot a perfect 5-of-5 from the floor and 4-of-4 from the charity stripe to lead the Americans in scoring with 15 points as they topped Australia 92-65.
“You always knew she was going to be prepared. You always knew that she was going for the jugular,” Bird said of Lawson. “She wasn’t going to miss a moment. Kara was the one that stepped up, balled out… I don’t think anybody on the roster was surprised by that moment, because that’s who Kara is.”
After 13 seasons in the WNBA, Lawson retired from playing and embarked on a career in broadcasting, working as both a sideline reporter and color analyst for NBA and women’s college games. But the passion she really wanted to chase was coaching.
The first organization to hand her a whistle was Team USA, hiring her to work with the men’s and women’s 3×3 teams as that variation of the sport was preparing for its Olympic debut. In 2021, Lawson coached the women’s 3×3 team to a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics.
“Somebody along the line has to believe in your ability. Somebody has to give you that chance. And I might be one of the few people in history that USA Basketball was their first coaching job,” Lawson said. “They believed in me first.”
Lawson then spent a season with the Boston Celtics as an assistant under Stevens before becoming the head coach of the Blue Devils in the summer of 2020. Duke has won 70.1 percent of its games under Lawson, making the NCAA Tournament in each of the last three seasons. This past season culminated with Duke’s first ACC championship and Elite Eight appearance since 2013.
With her Blue Devils in the crowd — dressed in sweatsuits akin to what their coach typically wears at practices — Lawson gave her Duke players credit for helping her get the Team USA gig.
“You are nothing without good players. You have to have good players to have the greatest success. And I told them this last week, I know I’m not standing here without these players,” Lawson said. “They don’t give this job to someone that coaches a team that stinks… They had to decide that we were going to be good.”
Bird became the managing director for Team USA back in May and has been thinking about who she might hire as the team’s next coach ever since.
Traditionally, most coaches who have led the national team have done so for only one Olympic cycle. The lone exception is Bird’s college coach, UConn’s Geno Auriemma, who guided the team to gold medals in both the 2012 games in London and the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro.
When Bird began plotting what the ideal candidate might look like, she wanted someone who was a superb communicator, someone who understood both college and WNBA players, and someone with Team USA coaching experience. Lawson, who had just been a top assistant for Cheryl Reeve at the 2024 Olympics, checked all the boxes. And if this summer’s AmeriCup was a test trial — where Lawson led a team of college players to a 7-0 record and the championship, securing a spot in next year’s FIBA World Cup in Germany — she passed with flying colors.
Ironically, Bird happened to be in an airport too when she called Lawson with her decision.
“We were both in a bit of a time crunch… I’ve never done this before either. I wanted to enjoy it for myself, wanted to get it right for Kara,” Bird recalled. “Pretty quickly it was just, ‘Hey, if you’d like this job, it’s yours,’ kind of a vibe.”
On working with Bird, Lawson said, “Birdie and I have known each other since we were like 10 or 11 — a long time. She’s very, very sharp. A great teammate, a big picture thinker… We’re going to lean on each other a lot.”
Chairs were assembled in front of the stage at Cameron Indoor Stadium where Lawson was introduced as the national team coach for the first time. In the first row, two seats held bouquets. One was for Lawson’s late father, and the other — a gold vase containing orange flowers — was for her college coach, the legendary Pat Summitt.
Lawson is, inarguably, the strongest active branch remaining on the Summitt coaching tree. The last time the Olympics were held in Los Angeles was in 1984, where Summitt coached the team to the gold medal for the first time. When the Summer Games return to the City of Angels in 2028, it’ll be one of Summitt’s Lady Vols guiding the team.
“She’s been the most powerful influence on how I coach, how I structure my program, foundationally what I do,” Lawson said. “To be honest, I never thought I’d be in the same sentence as her, ever. How could you think that you would be with all she accomplished? And so, now, to share at least one title with her is really, really fulfilling as her player.”
Lawson added later: “I think she would always tell me to enjoy the opportunity, to be myself, and to make sure we were good on defense.”
It’s not just Summitt’s legacy that Lawson will carry with her as she begins her tenure as the head coach of the national team. She is also, after all, a coach at Duke. And so, Lawson also follows in the footsteps of Mike Krzyzewski, the former Blue Devils’ men’s coach who shepherded the American men to three Olympic gold medals.
As she accepted the jersey from Bird, she stood on a stage on “Coach K Court” under banners that his teams hung across four decades in Durham.
“That’s kind of crazy. I don’t think I am in the class of either of those two coaches, but I do share the same title as the U.S. national team head coach,” Lawson said. “I’m good with that.”
