Kim Mulkey objects to Washington Post contacting her estranged family (2024)

Lawyers for LSU coach Kim Mulkey criticized The Washington Post for talking to her estranged father and her sister for an article that published on Saturday in the hours before her team’s 78-69 victory against UCLA in the Sweet 16.

Mulkey declined to speak with The Post directly, but said through her lawyers that her family members did not “relate in any way to her career,” the newspaper said in its story.

Mulkey and her father, Les, have not spoken in 37 years, The Post said, after Les’ infidelity and eventual divorce from Mulkey’s mother. Mulkey herself wrote about the subjects in her 2007 autobiography, “Won’t Back Down.” Mulkey walked alone down the aisle at her wedding, and returned notes from Les unread as he pleaded for reconciliation, according to The Post.

“His unfaithfulness to my mother devastated our entire family,” Mulkey wrote in her autobiography.

Last week, before The Post’s story was published, Mulkey threatened to sue the paper during a news conference ahead of the NCAA Tournament. She said she had received questions from The Post, and the newspaper in its story included her objections and responses to its queries about the details of its reporting.

Before her team’s game on Saturday, Mulkey said in an interview with ESPN shown on the broadcast that she did not know that The Post’s story had published.

“Are you really surprised by the timing of it?” Mulkey said to ESPN’s Holly Rowe. “I haven’t read it, don’t know if I will read it. I’ll leave that up to my attorneys.”

The Post spoke with Mulkey’s father, Les, and her sister, Tammy, and described their relationship from the time Kim Mulkey was a young girl, before she was a standout guard for Louisiana Tech in the 1980s and one of the top coaches in her sport.

The Tigers hired Mulkey in April 2021 and touted her as the “most accomplished” coach LSU had ever hired. Having grown up in a small town near Baton Rouge, La., Mulkey returned to her home state from Baylor, the private Texas school where she won three national titles. Mulkey and LSU won a national championship last season.

Even though they don’t talk, Les Mulkey said he sometimes drives the 50 miles from their hometown to Baton Rouge to watch his daughter while hidden away in the crowd, he told The Post.

The Post’s story also explored some of Mulkey’s strained relationships in basketball with players and others, a broad issue that has long been a criticism of the coach.

Mulkey’s success at Baylor came in conjunction with thorny relationships with some of her players. Most notably, in a book published in 2014, former Bears center Brittney Griner detailed how her relationship with Mulkey was difficult late in the 2013 season, their fourth together.

Griner wrote in her memoir, “In My Skin,” that she chafed when Mulkey warned her to cover her tattoos, delete social media messages about her girlfriend and LGBTQ issues, and to “keep your business behind closed doors.”

Years later, Mulkey initially declined to publicly address Griner’s detainment in Russia when the star player was arrested for carrying hashish oil in her luggage. Griner was eventually released in December 2022 and returned to the United States, and as LSU prepared for the Final Four several months later, Mulkey said that she had still not spoken to Griner, though she said she was happy Griner had been freed.

“I’m glad she’s safe, she’s sound. I think everybody is,” Mulkey said then.

Mulkey’s relationship with Griner is just one strand that has garnered past controversy. She’s received public pushback for her interactions with gay players, repeated comments minimizing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, her handling of LSU star forward Angel Reese’s early-season benching and four-game absence and most recently, a suggestion that South Carolina center Kamilla Cardoso and Reese should have fought after a bench-clearing melee in the SEC tournament championship.

The Post said in its story that it obtained an email through an open records request in which Mulkey said that Reese and other players “stay on that social media crap.”

Still, Mulkey received the second-most votes in The Athletic’s anonymous player poll last March when players were asked about which coach, other than one’s own, they would most want to play for.

“Just because of the energy she brings and she’s just so passionate about the game and in the game,” one player told The Athletic.

The Post said that Mulkey’s lawyers provided an affidavit from a former player, Morghan Medlock, who said she did not believe that Mulkey had mistreated gay athletes, including her and Kelli Griffin, who were in a relationship. Griffin spoke to The Post and said that while Mulkey was a good coach, “she made my life hell.”

Mulkey’s intensity and energy has been apparent since her days as a player. She led Louisiana Tech to its first NCAA Division I women’s basketball championship in 1982. She later won a gold medal as a member of Team USA on the 1984 Olympic team. Mulkey was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, with Michael Jordan accompanying her on stage at the 2021 ceremony.

Her impact was immediate at LSU. The program raised roughly $1.3 million in her first 10 days. The Tigers moved into a new training room and new offices. In her second season, the Tigers won the school’s first national championship. For her on-court success, LSU and Mulkey agreed to a 10-year, $32 million contract extension last September, reportedly making her the highest-paid women’s college basketball coach in the country.

Required reading

• LSU coach Kim Mulkey threatens legal action against The Washington Post in 4-minute tirade
• Rumors swirl as LSU coach Kim Mulkey says little about Angel Reese’s absence
• ‘She’s going to build a monster here’: LSU’s Kim Mulkey found surprising success in Year 1. But is this just the start?

(Photo: Jonathan Mailhes / CSM via ZUMA Wire)