How Kara Lawson guided Duke from ‘a season of adversity to a season of prosperity’

Last Sunday afternoon, the Duke Blue Devils beat the North Carolina Tar Heels, 72-68 in front of a raucous, sold-out crowd at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The win kept Duke undefeated in ACC play and atop the conference.  When the buzzer sounded, head coach Kara Lawson beamed as she embraced her two seniors, Ashlon Jackson and Taina Mair, who capped off an emotional senior night by leading the team in scoring and making key plays down the stretch to seal the win.

The postgame vibes on the court were completely different from those nine weeks ago, when Duke fell 93-77 to LSU for its fourth loss in a row to drop to 3-6 on the season. 

Every basketball season has its ups and downs, but Duke’s arc — from being preseason No. 7; to being out of the top 25 all together by the third week of the season amid a stretch that included a humiliating road loss to a West Virginia team that played the entire second half with only one starter and four bench players due to ejections and a loss to a South Florida team that is currently No. 75 in the NET rankings; to its current 16-game winning streak and return to No. 9 in the rankings — has been one of the most extreme in recent memory.

So how exactly has Duke turned things around so dramatically? There’s never just one factor, especially in a team sport, but Lawson’s postgame presser gave some invaluable insight — just not for the reason you might think.

First, here’s Lawson’s response when a reporter asked what she said to her team back in November in the thick of their struggles. 

I think what’s really important, whether you’re in a season of prosperity or you’re in a season of adversity … I think it’s really important that you stick to what’s real and true. What’s real and true in basketball? Film, analytics, what you see every day from your team. And when you stay focused and locked in on that, then you can give a real assessment of where you are and where you need to get to. Anything outside of that is irrelevant, right? Someone’s opinion doesn’t change whether you can do it or not. It’s just someone’s opinion. So to spend time and energy on that doesn’t serve you. And so the fastest way to get from a season of adversity to a season of prosperity is to lock in on what’s real and true. Figure out where you need to work and get better, and then it will turn at some point.

We don’t get to control the length of our adversity. That’s a frustrating thing about life. When we’re in adversity, we’re like, ‘OK, is it over yet?’ You wake up and you’re like, ‘Is it over yet?’ You don’t get to control that. You get to control who you are in it. That’s it. Who are you in adversity? That’s what you get to control. So what I focus on during that time, and what I encourage my players to focus on, is, ‘Who are we in this time, and where do we need to get to?’ And when you lock in on that, then you’re gonna have success at some point.

Her answer has struck a nerve with people, which isn’t a surprise. If you’ve paid any attention to Lawson over the years, you know she always has a deep reflection on life, work or personal growth on the tip of her tongue, even moreso than most coaches I encounter on the job, and her speeches frequently go viral.

But on Sunday, I wasn’t so much struck by the words she was saying, though they certainly were powerful. Rather, I was struck by how familiar they sounded. 

Sure enough, when I went back and revisited her press conference after the LSU loss, I realized she gave the exact same message. When asked what she was telling her players, she said she was telling them the truth and getting them to focus on film and individual plays rather than wins and losses. She praised them for staying positive amidst the adversity.

If you’ve gone through adversity in your life … you know you want it to end right away. You know, most of us want adversity and go really quickly. Like, OK, it’ll be tough for half a day and then we’re done. And this has been tough for longer for us. Like, good! Good. Because this is what life is about. You don’t get to control the length of your adversity. All you get to do is control your attitude and your focus and just work like heck to try and change it. And so it’s such a great life lesson for us, and I think it will turn for us at some point and I think we’ll look back on this stretch as a formative part.

Again, she said this minutes after her team suffered its fourth loss in a row, a loss that dropped the preseason ACC favorites to 3-6. People were calling for her to be fired.

That consistency and commitment to the big picture have clearly served her players well. Because it wasn’t just Lawson whose Feb. 15 press conference sounded eerily similar to her Dec. 4 one.

“We’re in the mud right now, and that’s both physically and literally,” Jackson said after the LSU game. “We’re very uncomfortable right now, which is a good thing, because in March, everybody is on and popping, so the team that is most comfortable with being uncomfortable, they usually succeed.”

And after the North Carolina win? 

“We got out of the mud,” Jackson said. “We all know how we started the season, but that was on purpose. How are you supposed to grow if you’re not used to playing this type of environment?”

Let’s be clear about one thing: Motivational words and self-help philosophies alone do not win games. Duke’s rebirth can be attributed to many things: Mair gaining confidence in a more assertive offensive role; the impressive development of redshirt freshman center Arianna Roberson; Riley Nelson’s move into the starting lineup; a relatively weak year in the ACC, to name a few. And it is far from a given that Duke will win the ACC tournament and make it back to the Elite Eight like it did last March. But after the way this team started the season, the fact that Lawson has them back in contention to achieve those things is a testament to her connection with her players.

“During that time, you know, Coach took a lot for us. It was not Coach. It was simply us. So we just really had to buy in and take accountability at some point. We couldn’t let her hold everything by herself. We had to have her back, because she always has our back,” Jackson said on Sunday.

“There’s not a thing in this world that I don’t love about Kara Lawson, even whenever she’s mad at me. She challenges me, she trusts me, she believes in me.”