When USC HC Lindsay Gottlieb reflected on how ACL injury started her coaching career: “I didn't play a ton and I was really analytical”

Long before she became head coach of the USC women’s basketball team, Lindsay Gottlieb’s path into coaching was shaped by a setback that many athletes dread. In a February 2020 interview with FOX Sports Ohio’s Angel Gray, Gottlieb, then an assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers, looked back on the pivotal moment that altered her relationship with the game.

Gottlieb said [0:38-0:51]:

“You know if anyone's been through an injury, it's the first time when the game is taken away from you. You kind of look at it from a different perspective, and then I got healthy again, I went off to college, and I think my angle about the game was different."

The injury happened during her high school days, but it planted the seed for her coaching future. After recovering and heading to college, Gottlieb said her view of basketball had completely changed.

“Then I didn't play a ton, and I was really analytical, and I started to embrace this role of helping a team, you know, in ways other than just scoring or rebounding.

"My classmates are applying to, you know, law school or business school, or they're getting internships or applying for a job, and I'm like, well, I want to coach; like, what do I do? I feel like I need to do something."

While her peers pursued internships, law school, or business degrees, Gottlieb found herself leaning in a different direction:

“So I used my time over winter break, you know, when we were on campus and nobody else is on campus except the athletes, you know, and I used that time to write a letter to every Division I women's basketball field.”

That hustle paid off, as Gottlieb rose steadily through the coaching ranks, first serving as an assistant at Syracuse, the program that gambled on her knowledge of the game. She went on to become an assistant coach at New Hampshire, Richmond, and then under Joanne Boyle at UC Berkeley.

Eventually, she became the head coach at UC Santa Barbara and later at Cal, where she led the team to its first-ever Final Four in 2013.

In 2019, she made history by joining the Cleveland Cavaliers as an assistant coach, becoming the first female coach hired by the franchise and one of the few women to coach in the NBA.

Lindsay Gottlieb took the Cavaliers job to inspire more women

In the interview, Gottlieb spoke about how difficult it was to leave her family and life back in Cal for an opportunity with the Cavaliers. She almost did not take it until she thought of the bigger implication of the opportunity this would present to women in the game:

“I began to think, how can I not do this, not just for myself, but for them, for, you know, the impact on women, the more far-reaching thing for them to believe, if at any point you're given an opportunity that's scary and hard and different and outside the box, like, I wanted to model for them that you can you can do it."

Now back in the college game at USC since 2021, Gottlieb has a wealth of experience and perspective, all rooted in that early injury and ability to think long term.