The Washington Post releases highly anticipated Kim Mulkey piece
The lengthy profile piece that drew the ire of LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey before it was even published has now dropped.
The Washington Post released the piece on Saturday morning, just hours before LSU will play a Sweet 16 game against 2-seed UCLA for the right to advance to the Elite Eight.
Kim Mulkey had previously slammed the Washington Post when informed they were going to press soon with a story featuring her, saying, “It’s these kind of sleazy tactics and hatchet jobs that people are just tired of.”
The piece itself, though, offers an in-depth look at Mulkey going from her childhood to her current perch atop LSU women’s basketball. It provides ample background on how Mulkey’s fiery personality came to be, as well as sharing some unique insight into her family life.
Much of it centered around her now-estranged relationship with her father, Les, who is now 86 years old.
The Washington Post detailed Les’ infidelity to his wife, something that cut the Mulkey family deeply, according to Mulkey’s own autobiography, ‘Won’t Back Down.‘ The Post described how Mulkey felt about it.
“The way Kim saw it, sister Tammy says, her dad hadn’t just walked out on his family,” the piece reads. “He had quit on the people who depended on him, the worst thing a person can do.”
The story also focuses quite a bit on Kim Mulkey’s relationship with gay or queer players, specifically in terms of how she allowed them to dress around the facilities and how she treated them compared to other players.
Mulkey, through her attorneys, either denied that she treated players differently or declined to address some of the alleged issues because they were overly vague.
Writes the Washington Post:
“Not long after (Kelli) Griffin arrived on campus, she says, Mulkey began asking why she dressed like a boy: baggy jeans, basketball shorts, sweats. A lady, Griffin says the coach told her, wears a dress. ‘Okay, this lady might not like gay people,’ Griffin recalls thinking.”
In any case, the piece is lengthy and encompassing in scope. It certainly leaves readers with a better overall impression of who Mulkey is as a coach and a leader and why.
It’ll be interesting to see how Kim Mulkey responds, given her comments before the piece went to press. She threatened to sue the Washington Post in the event of a “false story.”
“Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern that goes back years,” Mulkey said. “I told this reporter two years ago that I didn’t appreciate the hit job he wrote on Brian Kelly, and that’s why I wasn’t going to do an interview with him. After that, the reporter called two former college coaches of mine and left multiple messages that he was ‘with me’ in Baton Rouge to get them to call him back – trying to trick these coaches into believing that I was working with the Washington Post on a story.
“When my former coaches and found out that I wasn’t talking with the reporter, they were just distraught and they felt completely misled. Former players have told me that the Washington Post has contacted them and offered to let them be anonymous in a story if they’ll say negative things about me. The Washington Post has called former disgruntled players to get negative quotes to include in their story. They’re ignoring the 40-plus years of positive stories that they had heard from people about me.”