Kara Lawson will be the next head coach of the USA Basketball women’s national team, the program announced on Monday. Lawson, a former decorated Team USA player and current head coach at Duke, will helm the national team through 2028 — a cycle that includes the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. She takes over for Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, who led the U.S. to gold medals at the 2022 FIBA World Cup and 2024 Olympics.

Lawson, 44, has been a part of USA Basketball for most of her life. As a 17-year-old, she played at the World Youth Games in 1998 and joined the team again at the World University Games in 2001. She represented the U.S. at the senior level in 2008 at the Beijing Olympics. Her first coaching job came with USA Basketball in 3×3, and she coached the Americans to the inaugural 3×3 Olympic gold medal in the 2021 Games in Tokyo.

She was previously on the committee to select the Olympic team. She was an assistant coach for the senior national team during the last Olympic cycle, culminating in a gold medal in Tokyo, and now moves on to the head coaching role for her biggest challenge yet as the team goes for a ninth straight gold medal.

“(Lawson’s) international basketball experience is extensive, including 13 gold medals,” USA Basketball CEO Jim Tooley said in a statement. “To say her journey with us has been impressive is an understatement.”

Lawson was picked for the role by her former Olympic teammate, Sue Bird, in her first major decision as the managing director of the national team.

“Having shared the court with (Lawson), I know firsthand the leadership, competitive spirit and basketball IQ that she brings,” Bird said in a statement. “Kara has always had the respect of her teammates and her players, something she has earned and demonstrated over decades with USA Basketball as a player, 3×3 coach and assistant coach. I can’t wait to work with her and continue to build on the tradition of excellence that USA Basketball stands for.”

Lawson takes over a program that has been historically dominant. The women’s national team has won 10 of the 13 Olympic tournaments, including the last eight, as well as eight of the last 10 FIBA World Cups. There is a massive legacy for Lawson to uphold.

“This is a job with high standards, and I love that, and I love the expectations that we have because it’s our job to rise to them and to meet them,” Lawson told The Athletic. “To achieve anything meaningful in life, it’s supposed to be hard and it comes with risk. … You can’t shy away from that. You can’t be afraid of that, man, you have to face it head on.”

To achieve the success that has become normal for USA Basketball, Lawson knows she’ll have to build strong relationships with the players. She has existing connections with many of them through her various roles as a senior national team assistant, 3×3 coach and AmeriCup coach. She’ll also have to assemble a new staff of assistants for the upcoming cycle; now that Lawson has been promoted, her spot and Mike Thibault’s — who left to coach Team Belgium — will have to be filled.

Winning in the current environment is also more difficult than ever before. Team USA hung on for a gold medal by the skin of its teeth in Paris, eking out a one-point win over Team France. The global game is improving at a rapid pace. Much of the young talent in the WNBA is international, and those players are more prepared than ever to compete with the Americans.

“It’s challenging to win a game at a world competition, yet alone win the whole tournament,” Lawson said. “It’s incredibly difficult to do, and if you’re able to do it like we were last summer in Paris, it’s exhilarating because you’re having to do it against the top competition. We definitely look forward to competing against all these top teams.”

By becoming the head coach of Team USA, Lawson follows in the footsteps of her coaching mentor Pat Summitt, who was her college coach at Tennessee. Summitt was the first person to play for and then coach the women’s national team at the Olympics. That’s the goal of USA Basketball: to set a standard that future generations want to follow, a lineage that runs from Summitt to Lawson to long after both of them.

(Photo of Kara Lawson: Kirk Irwin / Getty Images)