CLEMSON — Praise always means a little more when it comes from someone who has known you since childhood – someone who watched you grow through elementary, middle, and high school, and now coaches you at the college level.
For Jaheim Lawson, that praise comes from Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney, a man he first knew simply as his friend Clay’s dad and his older brother Shaq’s coach, long before an offer from the Tigers came his way in 2021. As a D.W. Daniel alum, Lawson spent years around the Swinney family, often at their home, building a relationship that had little to do with football.