The impact of Kara Lawson’s Duke speech eclipses basketball
DURHAM, N.C. — Duke coach Kara Lawson keeps the messages sent to her over the last year and a half in a tidy three-ring binder in her office. They only tell a fraction of the story. Open social media, find her now famous “Handle hard better” video and scroll through the hundreds of comments:
“Great motivation!”
“I love this advice!”
“What a great message.”
They keep going and going, nearly all of them applauding Lawson and the 2-minute, 49-second message she delivered to her team in the summer of 2022. All Lawson set out to do that day was to speak to her players about facing hard challenges after a conversation she had with one of her freshmen.
Lawson didn’t script what she wanted to say. “Handle hard better” wasn’t even a catchphrase she used. “I don’t even know where ‘Handle hard better’ came from, to be honest with you,” Lawson told ESPN last month.
She just did what she always does. She talked. A member of Duke’s video team was there recording, the way the staff does every day at practice, and posted it on the Duke women’s basketball social media pages and YouTube.
“We all wait in life for things to get easier. It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better.”
Then everything changed.
The video went viral, totaling more than 1 million views. Kara Lawson — an All-American at Tennessee, Olympic gold medalist, WNBA champion, the first female assistant coach in the history of the Boston Celtics — had become the “Handle hard better” coach to a new generation of fans. Teachers and librarians, CEOs and realtors, military personnel, coaches and players, cancer patients and doctors all adopted her message in different ways — to teach, inspire and motivate.
Though she first spoke the words in 2022, they have real lasting effects today, as her Duke team prepares for the NCAA tournament. The video message still gets shared on social media, and Lawson rarely goes anywhere without being stopped and asked about her speech — even at the TSA line in the airport. She keeps “Handle hard better” bracelets either in her bag or pocket to hand out when the inevitable interaction happens.
Each person has a story to tell.
“There’s always a story behind people, and behind the words, and behind the impact,” Lawson said. “That is part of the magic of ‘Handle hard better.’ People tell me their stories. That’s amazing. Because you go from having surface interactions with people that you don’t know to having really deep and meaningful ones. All because of a video. That’s pretty cool.”
WHAT GOT LAWSON here, as the gatekeeper to so many “Handle hard better” stories feels destined. Her entire life embodies those three simple words.
Though the speech has introduced her to many for the first time, Lawson has lived nearly her entire life in the public eye. She made her first national television appearance on NBC at age 8 as the “Sportsman of the Week” for her youth football prowess. She played other sports, too, before settling on basketball, eventually becoming the Naismith Prep Player of the Year in 1999.
Her dad, William Lawson, meticulously worked to provide what Kara needed to succeed, both athletically and academically. William had high expectations for his three daughters — B’s were not allowed in his house, and neither was a lack of focus, preparation or accountability. He took her to every practice, every game, every tournament, and worked her out, too. William once described his relationship with Kara as “like twins joined at the hip.”
But when she chose to play for the late Pat Summitt at Tennessee, William opposed the decision. In an archived interview with ESPN, William explained that he had expected to sit down with Kara and discuss the pros and cons of her top choices. But when he found out Kara had committed to the Lady Vols without telling him, he was blindsided and called a family meeting. “I’ll never watch you play basketball again,” he told Kara.
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Lawson said it was hard at first not to have her dad at her games, but she never let it affect their relationship. It took nearly four years for William to relent, thanks in part to a conversation with former Lady Vols teammate Ashley Robinson. Tennessee had traveled to play George Washington, close to the Lawson home. Kara asked if she could invite the team over.
William spent three days cooking. He was there to greet the team when the team bus pulled up. It was the first time he had met his daughter’s college teammates. Robinson stepped off the bus, gave him a hug and said, “Mr. Lawson, you’re the only dad that’s not there.” Though William Lawson didn’t watch the George Washington game in person, the conversation proved to be a turning point. He eventually made his way to Knoxville and was there to watch Kara play for a national championship at the Final Four in 2003.
“It was never the wrong choice,” Kara Lawson said. “When you know what your purpose is, and that’s a path that you need to walk, you’re solid in it. There was no doubt at all. That was where I was supposed to be, and who I was supposed to play for. I always knew I wanted to be a coach. To play for her … It changed my life.”
William and Summitt remain her two biggest mentors. Their deaths 15 months apart — Summitt in 2016 and William in 2017 — were the most challenging time in her life. Learning how to handle hard was, well, hard.
“I was lamenting to one of my friends about loss,” Lawson said. “Like, I don’t even know who to call now if I have a big career decision, or I have something in my life that I need. How do you, as an adult, find a new mentor? And he said something that stuck with me. He said, ‘Have you ever thought that it’s time for you to mentor other people?'”
Lawson had never thought about it that way. But all the life lessons she learned from her dad and Summitt could be poured into others. At the time, she was doing television work for ESPN and had dipped her toe into coaching. Lawson said that conversation recentered her, and she decided to pursue coaching to fulfill a lifelong dream.
In 2019-20, she became the first female assistant in Celtics history. In 2020, Duke hired her for her first collegiate head coaching job.
“I won’t be Pat Summitt,” Lawson said. “I won’t be my dad. But I can have impact like they did. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
WHEN LAWSON SPEAKS to her players, she tries to impart what she learned during her time on the court — and the authenticity of her speeches makes them easy to gravitate toward. Her ability to effectively communicate is rooted in the lessons she learned from Summitt, who pushed her as the point guard and leader on the team to be more assertive and find her voice. As a commentator, she honed that talent.
“Handle hard better” wasn’t the first video posted to the Duke women’s basketball social media pages. But it struck a chord because it could be applied far beyond sport.
When Steve Buches first saw the video, scrolling on X, he felt as if Lawson was speaking directly to him. As a former Pitt football player and high school football coach, Buches always finds himself seeking out motivational videos to show both his kids and his players. This one, though, felt different.
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The Buches family had been going through significant challenges. One of his four children, Stephen, was born with a genetic mutation that causes intractable epilepsy. Stephen couldn’t walk, talk or care for himself.
Steve showed the video to his wife, Amy, and to his other kids, Addison (12), Michaela (10) and James (5). They adopted “Handle hard better” as their family mantra. Every morning at 6 a.m., Steve texted the full video to Addison and Michaela as a reminder before they started their day. He had the phrase tattooed on the underside of his bicep — strategically placed. Because the older Stephen got, the harder it became to lift him in and out of his chair, and to carry him up and down the stairs. No matter, Steve told himself. Handle hard better.
“It almost doesn’t matter about sports,” Steve said in a phone interview from his home in Pittsburgh. “It’s more about life for us.”
Last month, the girls saw that Duke was coming to town to play Pitt. “I wish I could meet Kara Lawson” Michaela mused. They made plans to go, but that morning, Stephen had what Amy described as a “rough seizure morning.” They were all worried, but Amy had made a promise. She took Addison, Michaela and James to the game. The girls wore “Handle hard better” T-shirts. Michaela made a Handle Hard Better poster. Amy, who played basketball at Pitt, knew strategically where to sit so Lawson would see them.
On her way to the locker room at halftime, Lawson smiled and waved at the girls. Amy said that made their day. But their day was about to get better. After the game ended, Lawson called Addison and Michaela over to talk and handed each one a “Handle hard better” bracelet.
Amy’s eyes welled with tears. Afterward, Michaela said to Steve, “Kara’s smile was so big. She was so happy to see us.”
Two weeks later, after a sizable uptick in his seizures, Stephen died. He was 8 years old. On the day of the funeral, Steve watched as his kids lived out the lesson he had tried to instill while Stephen was alive. Right there at the gravesite, his three kids started to play tag, and they made sure to use the flowers laid for Stephen as a way to include him in their game.
“Even though Stephen is not here anymore, it was one of the first things that we thought of, that we have to handle hard better. We told the girls, ‘This is going to be really hard,'” Steve said, fighting through tears. “But slowly over time, we will handle it better. Then to see that … it was really awesome.”
Many similar stories have reached Lawson. Jaystan Davis, who went to the same high school as Duke guard Ashlon Jackson, was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer at 19 and had to give up his college basketball career.
He was about halfway through his immunotherapy and chemo treatments when he saw the “Handle hard better” message on Instagram. From that point on, he used the message to push him through. Davis proudly wore a “Handle hard better” T-shirt the day his treatments ended and he rang the bell, a tradition that marks the end of treatment, in August 2023.
“Handling hard better is persevering through hard times in life,” Jaystan Davis said. “I feel that my story is a good representation of the ‘Handle hard better’ message — just through completing treatment and just being here today.”
Lawson is quick to point out that not every message she gets is related to a life-or-death situation. Craig Drescher, a retired commander from the 908th Airlift Wing in Montgomery, Alabama, showed the video during a monthly leadership session with the wing. The message resonated so much with the group that when he recently retired, Drescher was given a special gift: A helicopter blade mounted on a plaque with words from the speech:
“We all wait in life for things to get easier. It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better … So make yourself a person that handles hard well.”
There are other stories similar to that one. A doctor in Brazil wrote to Lawson to let her know she shared the message with co-workers. Teachers across the country have written to tell her how they have incorporated the message into their lesson plans. One gym teacher made a banner and hung it up as a daily reminder.
Then there are the coaches — from basketball to football, softball and beyond — who have adopted the phrase as a theme for their sports season. A quick social media search shows many have tagged Lawson with their photos, proud to let her know just how much of an impact she has made on them, their teams and their lives.
Lawson acknowledged there are those who have no idea she was a basketball star before the speech. There are also those who stop her and don’t want to talk about hoops. Only “Handle hard better.”
For a woman who has accomplished nearly all there is to accomplish in the sport, perhaps her newfound role is what Summitt and her dad had prepared her for. Basketball and life are intertwined, but this type of impact transcends sport boundaries.
“It’s just amazing that I’ve spent my whole life in the sport of basketball, and to have a video that came from what I’ve done my whole life impact people on a greater scale is not something I ever imagined,” Lawson said. “But it’s something that I’m embracing.”
Alexandra Nolen contributed to this report.