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….
