Kara Lawson on overcoming assumptions in time coaching with Boston Celtics

When current-day Duke Women's Basketball head coach Kara Lawson was working as an assistant coach for the Boston Celtics , she did not want the fact that she was a woman to be a distraction despite being one of a handful around the NBA in such a role and the first in history for the Celtics. But there were moments when that was out of her hands, the assumptions of others working in her ambit working against her in ways that simply would not have happened had she been a man in that role.

Lawson shared an example of how this would happen from time to time in away venues where the event security would be unaware of her identity as one of Boston's assistant coaches in a recent interview . "I think some of the harder moments were probably when you'd be in away arenas, because they wouldn't believe you were a part of the staff and they wouldn't let me on the court because I didn't have a credential," she explained.

"But coaches don't wear credentials," Lawson continued. "We just go from the locker room to the to the court, and the security would stop me a lot."

"And I would literally be walking next to a fellow assistant coach that was a male that didn't have a credential," she added, "but they wouldn't stop them they would always stop me."

"And then they would ask where my credential is. And I say, 'Well, I don't have one'. They say, 'Well, you can't come on the court'. And then the assistant coach that was with me would be like, 'No, she's a coach. And then they still wouldn't let me'. And they go get a supervisor. And then, so then I'm late to the bench because I couldn't get on (court). So it would be things like that, that people wouldn't think that. I was a coach."

"That was usually at the away arenas," said Lawson. "Obviously, in the home arena in Boston, all the security and ushers knew who I was."