When a team loses a star performer like JuJu Watkins, how should leaders react?

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Editor's note: This story is part of Peak, The Athletic's desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here.
'JuJu always gets up.'
That's what USC women's basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb told herself as she watched her star player, All-America sophomore guard JuJu Watkins, fall halfway through the first quarter of USC's NCAA Tournament second round game. On the evening of March 24, 2025, expectations could not have been higher for the Trojans, the No. 1 seed and a title contender led by Watkins, a 6-foot-1 thunderbolt who had averaged 25.5 points and seven rebounds over her first two years in college.
If you watched Watkins even once, you knew this: She was destined to follow Caitlin Clark and Paige Bueckers as a franchise-changing figure upon her arrival in the WNBA.
Gottlieb had seen Watkins hit the floor many times but never feared she would suffer an injury. Maybe that was a delusional belief, but some of it was also Gottlieb's own pathology. She will tell you that injuries are the most anxiety-producing thing she has dealt with as a head coach. It impacts her far more than wins and losses.
After Watkins went down after some slight contact while running the floor in transition, Gottlieb slowly walked onto the court. Watkins clutched her knee on the ground as her teammates forced a circle around her. Gottlieb could tell it wasn't good; Watkins had torn her ACL.
'I've been in sports for a long time, and I've never experienced anything as emotional as how that building was,' Gottlieb said. 'First, there was just silence. Then there was sort of an anger. The fans really love JuJu in L.A. It's a ride-or-die group for her. So they were hurt and angry, but then it quickly turned into an emotion of positivity for the rest of our team.'
I was curious about how coaches navigate losing a star player, and I wondered if there were lessons for the business world, as leaders often have to adapt to adversity and losing star employees is a common occurrence.
Gottlieb and former Notre Dame head coach Muffet McGraw take Peak readers through three lessons they've accumulated through these experiences.
Create a culture of adaptability
Gottlieb cares deeply for Watkins, so when she went down, Gottlieb thought, What does JuJu need from me right now? She determined that Watkins needed to see her face for comfort. Gottlieb then needed to navigate how the rest of her team would react to a catastrophic injury.
'I kept telling myself, 'Lindsay, take a deep breath,'' Gottlieb said. 'I had to recenter myself in real time. If we lose a game and I'm upset about a loss, I have my own process that I go through. I let myself grieve for an amount of time and I then watch the film because I become much better when I watch the film and see what actually happened. Then I can start to find solutions. But during a game, you're usually not faced with that kind of emotion.'
Gottlieb gathered her players and told them: 'OK, everybody breathe. Look at each other. We got this. We've got (Watkins). Let's do what we need to do here.'
Gottlieb said you can't create a new Watkins in real time. But you can create an infrastructure where people possess the skills to adapt. It's not an exact science, but Gottlieb says she aims to surround herself with people who can deal with adversity.
'The idea is to create a team where people do what they do but can do better or more if and when called upon,' she said. 'So much of our team identity had to do with JuJu. Not just her scoring but passing, her rebounding, her defense. A lot of things were predicated on what she brings to the table. So people had to not only navigate their own goals but how their role was impacted by her absence. '
McGraw, who won two national titles at Notre Dame, recalled the 2018 season when several players suffered ACL injuries. During a game against Wake Forest, Irish guard Lili Thompson went down with another ACL injury.
'I put my head down and said to myself, 'Come on, not again,'' McGraw said. 'Then I thought, 'God, get a hold of yourself. The whole team's watching.' I remember going into the huddle and looking at them, saying, 'Who wants to play the point? Marina Mabrey and Jackie Young both stepped up and said, 'I can do it.' That was the case where they gave me confidence to believe that we could still do it.'
The same had happened four years earlier when star forward and team captain Natalie Achonwa tore her ACL with less than five minutes left during an Elite Eight game against Baylor. Notre Dame was 35-0.
'It was a huge blow because Natalie was one of our best players and our leader,' McGraw said. 'She got up after tearing her ACL and instead of worrying about herself, she called the other four starters over and was pointing at them. She shouted, 'You're going to win this game. Do not let me down.' It was an unbelievable moment of leadership.'
Convey poise and confidence in the face of adversity
In the first team meeting after Watkins' injury, Gottlieb had two objectives.
'From a personal standpoint, I was devastated,' she said. 'I was devastated for this young person who should be playing basketball in March Madness and beyond. I wanted to convey the right amount of humanity and how awful I felt for JuJu and for us.
'At the same time, I have to project the confidence that we still have what it takes to win the next game and all the games in front of us. I felt like my mission was to show my true self. There is sadness and there's pain with what's happened, but there is also optimism that we are fully capable of what's in front us. I knew they were going to take my lead on that, and I think they did.'
Two weeks later, when Gottlieb sat down for an interview about Watkins for a documentary, that her emotions finally caught up with her.
'I hadn't processed every emotion when we were playing because I knew I had to keep going,' Gottlieb said. 'When we did that interview, they asked me to take them through the moment and that's when I started balling. I could not get through it without crying.'
A loss can still provide valuable learning
Before USC played Kansas State in the Sweet 16, players wore jerseys with Watkins' name on them. The Trojans won and advanced to the Elite Eight for the second straight season.
'Yes, they missed her in every way, but they were still confident that we would win the game,' Gottlieb said. ' When I think about things in my coaching career, I'm really proud of that.'
USC's run ended in the Elite Eight with a 78-64 loss to UConn. The Trojans also had lost in the Elite Eight the previous year to UConn. But Gottlieb said this experience was different.
'You're ultimately judged by the final result, and greatness is judged by championships and things like that,' she said. 'I understand that. I judge our games on what we could have done, possession by possession, with the players that we had.
'We lost (in) the same round to the same team the year before, so you might say it's all the same. But it wasn't. Because I saw so much growth and so much achievement by our team.'
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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