IT Nerd of 30yrs and avid hobbiest of genealogy, geology and science in general.

  • 0 Posts
  • 92 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle













  • Part 1 of Article

    The Kim Mulkey way

    TICKFAW, La. — In the two sisters’ minds, the old house remains as it was: a one-story brick ranch a hundred yards off the road, white fence under two ancient oaks, tin roof long before it all caved in.

    Their father built on the farmland he had inherited. Dug a swimming pool, poured the concrete for a basketball court, carved two softball fields into pasture. His two girls, born less than a year apart, would grow up running and hiding and disappearing among the pines.

    “I just miss the memories,” Tammy, the 60-year-old younger sister, says.

    They’re in the backyard in her favorite, shooting baskets with Daddy by starlight. It feels so real, she says. So precious and warm.

    “I wish I could have it all back,” she says.

    Story continues below advertisement FIFTY MILES SOUTH AND WEST, a massive crowd is here to watch the older sister, to wear sequins like her, to cheer on her team. Five decades have passed since Kim Mulkey’s father first bounced a basketball to his daughters, explaining the keys to victory.

    Speed. Stamina. Grit.

    The game itself hasn’t changed much, but everything else around Mulkey has. It’s a Sunday in early March, the same day Pete Maravich’s 54-year-old career scoring record will fall. More than 13,000 people are packed into the LSU arena named for Maravich, and Tigers alumnus and former NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal is in the tunnel. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a picture of star LSU forward Angel Reese on the front and her nickname, “Bayou Barbie,” in hot pink letters on the back.

    Reese strolls onto the floor. Fans chant “One more year!” pleading with her to stay in college. And because the value of her name, image and likeness (NIL) rights is estimated to be worth multiples more than the $240,000 WNBA maximum salary, she just might.

    “Times are different,” Mulkey will say in a news conference following the game. “You can be beautiful. You can be talented. You can be tough. You can be you.”

    Few live that last part more than Mulkey, who wears feathers almost as dramatically as she ruffles them. Her outfits during games are legendary, and during last year’s NCAA tournament, fans wanted to see Reese and her teammates tear through the bracket, sure. But they also wanted to see what their coach might wear, say or do next.

    She explodes at officials and is suspicious of reporters. Mulkey declined repeated interview requests for this story, and after LSU received an email from The Washington Post seeking comment on various elements of this story, she used two NCAA tournament news conferences to take aim at The Post’s reporting, threatening legal action in the event of “a false story.” LSU declined to comment.

    “Not many people are in a position to hold these kinds of journalists accountable,” she said. “But I am, and I’ll do it.”

    It’s by no means her first or most high-profile controversy. In 2013, the NCAA suspended Mulkey for a tournament game after she criticized referees. She later publicly defended Baylor, her former employer, amid a sexual assault scandal in its football program. In November, she told reporters after a road game that they could blame her if they were sick at Thanksgiving.

    “I ain’t a sissy,” she said, holding a tissue and choking back sniffles. “I’ve got some kind of cold. It might be covid, but I ain’t testing.”

    She is also known to hold grudges and clash with players, including about their appearances and displays of their sexuality, according to interviews with former players and news reports. Mulkey and Brittney Griner, the coach’s biggest star at Baylor, have feuded for more than a decade. And while Griner’s 294-day detainment in a Russian prison eventually required White House intervention, it wasn’t enough to ease tension long after Griner first said Mulkey encouraged gay players to hide their sexuality and “keep your business behind closed doors,” Griner wrote in her memoir.

    “Kim Mulkey is an amazing coach; the reason I went to Baylor is because of her,” says Kelli Griffin, who played for Mulkey from 2007 to 2010. But, Griffin says, “She made my life hell” by drawing attention to Griffin’s clothes and issuing a suspension that ultimately ended the player’s career. And she believes it started after Mulkey found out she was gay.

    Mulkey’s attorneys, in letters to The Post, denied that Mulkey treated gay players “more harshly or differently.” They provided an affidavit from former Baylor player Morghan Medlock, who said that she was in a relationship with Griffin and that she never witnessed Mulkey mistreat Griffin or other gay athletes. Former Baylor and LSU player Alexis Morris put it more bluntly to ESPN: “Coach Mulkey is not homophobic.”

    Mulkey, in a 2013 interview with OutSports, insisted that she didn’t care about players’ sexuality and wouldn’t ask them about it.

    “I don’t think it’s anybody’s business,” she said then. “Whoever you are. I don’t care to know that.”

    Her conflicts with star players are over other issues too, though, and they have continued at LSU, even as players’ leverage and celebrity swell. She benched Reese for four games this season for reasons the coach refused to explain, weeks after appearing to call out Reese for a poor shooting performance. (Reese did not respond to messages from The Post seeking comment.) Mulkey told a supporter last year that Reese had been left off an awards list because of her GPA, according to email obtained via public records request by The Post. In another email, Mulkey complained that Reese was one of several players who “stay on that social media crap.”





  • comador @lemmy.worldtomemes@lemmy.worldReal French
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    3 months ago

    As a yank who lived in the UK (East Sussex) for several years, I can share the sentiments of my mates there that they believe we Americans still speak a more traditional version of the language than they do now. Specifically pronunciation of words.

    For example, Americans have retained the pronunciation of the final “r” in words like “father” and “mother,” while the UK has dropped it. Americans have maintained the “flat a” sound of cat in words like “path” and “class” whereas the UK has mostly replaced that sound with the “broad a” of “father.”

    It’s not an exact science, but the rate of change in the language there has gone beyond the 18th century version we Americans still speak today and thus, it can be said American English, at least pronunciation, is more traditional.