This one feels like a little bit of a reach, no?
Kim Mulkey is quite the lightning rod in college basketball. The LSU women’s coach has received her fair share of criticism over her comments and behavior in the past, including reports that she told star player Brittney Griner and other players at Baylor during her time as head coach not to discuss their sexuality in public.
And just recently, after a brawl during the SEC championship game, Mulkey once again found herself in hot water for her comments saying that she wished South Carolina player Kamilla Cardoso had pushed LSU star Angel Reese:
“No one wants to see that ugliness. But I can tell you this, I wish she would’ve pushed Angel Reese. Don’t push a kid. You’re 6’8″, don’t push somebody that little.”
Then this past weekend, Mulkey made headlines for her 4-minute rant during a press conference calling out the Washington Post for what she said is an upcoming hit piece that the paper will be running on her:
“The lengths he has gone to try and put a hit piece together. This reporter has been working on a story about me for two years. […] [I] hired the best defamation law firm in the country, and I will sue The Washington Post if they publish a false story on me.
Not many people are in a position to hold these kinds of journalists accountable but I am, and I’ll do it…This is exactly why people don’t trust journalists and the media anymore…It’s these kinds of sleazy tactics and hatchet jobs that people are tired of.
I’m fed up, and I’m not going to let The Washington Post attack this university, this awesome team or me without a fight.”
Of course it sounds like Mulkey’s never heard of the Streisand Effect, because now everybody is just sitting around waiting for the newspaper to drop their story that probably wouldn’t have gotten much attention if she hadn’t been the first one to bring it up.
But now, the knives are out from the Kim Mulkey haters, and the defending national champion coach is already being criticized online for some of her past behavior – including, apparently, not doing enough to get her former player Brittney Griner out of a Russian prison?
Several Twitter accounts, including the large @RedditCFB account, have taken to social media to accuse the coach of not doing enough to get Griner out of prison when she was arrested in Russia back in 2022 for drug smuggling after being caught with vape cartridges containing hash oil.
Griner ultimately pled guilty and was sentenced to 9 years in prison, but was released after 10 months in a heavily-criticized prisoner swap that saw the United States exchange Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” for Griner.
So while the US was forced to give up a Russian arms dealer to get Griner back, apparently Twitter thinks that Kim Mulkey could have gotten us a better deal? Or something?
I mean, what was Kim Mulkey supposed to do? Call up Vladimir Putin and scold him like she does her players until he released her? Fly to Russia in her Elton John blazer and talk to the prison guards herself?
The entirety of the United States government was working to get Griner home, I’m not really sure there’s much that Kim Mulkey, a women’s basketball coach from Louisiana, could have done to help the situation.
And many were quick to call out how ridiculous the attack was:
I wasn’t aware that a college women’s bball coach had a lot of sway with the Russian government, particularly when Griner was guilty.
— Big XII Stake Conference (@pbarlow1966) March 23, 2024
She’s the only coach in college basketball who doesn’t participate in high level international diplomacy. Everyone knows almost all of our Secretaries of State were college basketball coaches before taking on the role. Starting with our first, Thomas Jefferson, at William & Mary.
— Matt Hamlin (@MattHamlinTX) March 23, 2024
Now, there are plenty of valid criticisms of Kim Mulkey. And who knows, maybe something terrible is about to come out in the WaPo story. But criticizing her for not doing enough to get a former player out of a Russian prison? It’s not like she could have just offered to pay her bail for her.
The internet can be so unserious sometimes when there’s an agenda to be pushed.
