Duke's Kara Lawson Gets Choked Up Talking About Leaving Celtics

New coach is leaving NBA sideline

Kara Lawson will leave the Boston Celtics just as the team began preparing for the NBA season’s resumption. Lawson has been a Boston assistant for the last year but will leave the bench to take over as Duke’s head coach.

In her introductory press conference at Duke, she was asked about how difficult it was to leave the Celtics.

“You’re going to try to get me to start crying on the Zoom,” she said. “It’s been an emotional three days, man. It’s been tough, you know.”

She then spent 25 seconds trying to collect herself after getting choked up.

“I think it’s the relationships that makes basketball special,” she continued. “I’ve built a lot of deep relationships with these guys I think any coach that’s leaving a place and going to another place knows that feeling, and it’s hard to leave. Certainly, the relationships that I’ve built all over the roster and all over the coaching staff—yeah, its difficult.”

With the team regrouping in the NBA “Bubble” in Orlando, Lawson had even more time to bond with the Celtics players.

“You’re with these guys every day,” she said. “You’re with your players every day. In this Bubble scenario, we eat every meal together. We’re around each other all the time. They’re special. our team is special.”

The players are thrilled for Lawson’s opportunity, especially the former Duke player on Boston’s roster.

“I had a chance to talk to them before practice yesterday,” she said. “Jayson Tatum is obviously very excited. We started off our practice around the circle and JT gave a great intro on how excited he was for me to be at Duke now.”

Even the non-Blue Devils are on board.

“Jaylen Brown came up to me and said he never thought he’d cheer for Duke, and now he’s going to cheer for Duke,” she said. “Just the support of those guys, the texts. Every day, they come up to me, even if they’ve already told me congratulations, they come up to me again, every day since it happened. They’re just so excited. Enes Kanter wants a courtside seat. We’re going to have to work on that.”