NEW ORLEANS — The following is a review of the Washington Post article on Kim Mulkey.
The much-anticipated Washington Post story on Kim Mulkey by Kent Babb (subscription needed) dropped Saturday morning, just hours before the team’s Sweet 16 game against UCLA and while it was a lengthy profile of a talented but flawed person, it didn’t seem to have any ground-breaking revelations.
The story had been anticipated since Mulkey held a press conference last week in which she lashed out at the Post and threatened to sue for what she figured to be a “hit piece” on her and the program.
The lengthy story talked about a driven, talented youth and college player who became a driven and talented head coach who drives her players seemingly in hopes of getting them to be as motivated as she is and at times uses questionable tactics. However, those are tactics that people who have read profiles of legendary football and men’s basketball coaches would probably shrug their shoulders at and say they’ve seen worse.
Among the takeaways are that Mulkey values loyalty above almost all else. She reportedly hasn’t spoken to her father in 37 years and didn’t have him walk her down the aisle when she was married. The two hadn’t been close since he left their mother and ended their marriage. She also apparently has a rift with her sister, who she hasn’t spoken to in about half of a decade. The cause of the rift was not elaborated upon in the article.
Mulkey didn’t respond to inquiries for responses by Babb and the Post and before Saturday’s game she said she hadn’t read the story, complained a bit about the timing and said she doubted she would read it.
"I haven't read it and I probably won't read it," she reiterated after the game. "I probably will have my attorneys read it to see if there's anything we need to be concerned about."
Mulkey and her husband divorced years ago. She and her alma mater also divorced, metaphorically, when she wasn’t offered a 5-year contract to become its head coach even though she had been a star player and a loyal assistant.
There are also several former players at Baylor to whom she doesn’t talk. As it has been revealed before, some past players believe Mulkey has an issue with gay players, most specifically her biggest star at Baylor, WNBA player Brittney Griner, who wrote in her own memoir that Mulkey encouraged gay players to hide their sexuality and “keep their business behind closed doors.”
Sort of, a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ type of policy at a Baptist University, who the story says, still has a policy that forbids premarital sex and defines marriage as being between a man and a woman.
Mulkey’s attorneys apparently gave some type of responses to the Post, denying that she had treated gay players “more harshly or differently.”
The article quoted former LSU and Baylor player Alexis Morris as telling ESPN that “Coach Mulkey is not homophobic.”
Loyalty though, as the story points out, runs both ways – negatively to those she feels let her down or wronged her or those she cares about but positively, as with former legendary Tennessee women’s basketball coach and strict disciplinarian Pat Summit, who kept her on the Olympic team in 1984 despite an injury that wouldn’t allow her to play. Mulkey got her medal and Summit got undying loyalty. The LSU coach visited Summit on her death bed, the story says.
The Post also goes to great lengths to describe, in fact end the article with a long retelling of Mulkey after a game, responding to a large crowd of Tiger faithful who had waited to see her after the game, staying for a long time to sign autographs and take pictures.
The article is well worth the read and doesn’t necessarily unearth much that wasn’t known but it is a compelling profile of a woman who has completely transformed LSU women’s basketball.
