Maga darling or woke warrior? Kim Mulkey probably doesn’t care

Everything about Kim Mulkey screams LOOK AT ME – from her garish sideline fashion to her in-your-face coaching style to her combative media posture. But perceptions of Mulkey have never shifted as wildly as during this year’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament, where the LSU coach has been under a level of scrutiny unlike any she has endured over her long hoops career.

The rollercoaster ride started late last month, with the 61-year-old dedicating the first of two postgame news conferences to lambasting an imminent Washington Post “hit piece” on her. This, despite the paper spending two years courting her cooperation and giving her two more days to respond to a final list of questions. Mulkey threatened legal action and tarred Kent Babb, the respected Post writer in question, as a two-bit muckraker. (“Not many people are in a position to hold these kinds of journalists accountable, but I am, and I’ll do it,” Mulkey said.) While the aggressive PR defense endeared Mulkey to swathes of conservative-leaning hoops agnostics who are plenty leery of the press already, it had the backfiring effect of providing free advertising for what proved to be a fairly benign profile – a major letdown for readers who were half expecting the Post to report that she had been at the Capitol on January 6, based on the coach’s outburst.

Related: Governor threatens scholarships after LSU women miss anthem at NCAA tournament

Just when Mulkey appeared beyond redemption, the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed before LSU’s Sweet Sixteen matchup with UCLA, touting it as a reckoning between good and evil. Writer Ben Bolch described UCLA as “milk and cookies” and “America’s sweethearts,” while depicting LSU’s predominantly Black women’s team as “Louisiana hot sauce,” and “dirty debutantes”. Bolch and the Times scrambled to save face, albeit without mentioning the role massive layoffs at the paper played in helping the column sneak through. Even as Mulkey beat the press again, she was nonetheless careful to frame Bolch’s broadside as a sexist attack while ignoring the obvious racial components. “How dare people attack kids like that,” she fumed. “You don’t have to like the way we play. You don’t have to like the way we trash-talk … But I can’t sit up here as a mother and a grandmother and a leader of young people and allow somebody to say that. Because guys, that’s wrong. I know sexism when I see it and I read it.”

When LSU were beaten by a Caitlin Clark-inspired Iowa on Monday night, ending their title defense, it seemed Mulkey’s arc would end with opposing fans getting the last laugh by sharing pictures of her with an image from the Capitol riot superimposed on to her green screen pantsuit. But a reporter had noticed that LSU hadn’t been on the court for the national anthem and asked Mulkey about it after the game – the most-watched women’s college game in history. “I don’t know,” said Mulkey, insisting the move wasn’t politically motivated. “We come in and we do our pregame stuff. I’m sorry, listen, that’s nothing intentionally done.”

Whether she was playing coy or not, that didn’t stop Louisiana governor Jeff Landry, a noted Trump ally, from calling for student-athletes who don’t stand for the anthem to lose their scholarships. “My mother coached women’s high school basketball during the height of desegregation,” Landry wrote on X, “no one has a greater respect for the sport and for Coach Mulkey. However, above respect for that game is a deeper respect for those that serve to protect and unite us under one flag!”

All of it only further clouds the picture of a coach who couldn’t seem more misunderstood. Where UConn’s Geno Auriemma and South Carolina’s Dawn Staley are well-known quantities in women’s basketball, Mulkey remains an enigma despite a career that started nearly 50 years ago. As a 5ft 4in point guard in the 1980s, she led Louisiana Tech to two national championships and won an Olympic gold medal with the 1984 US national team. She would spend the next 15 years on the Lady Techsters’ bench as a coaching apprentice, styling herself in the mold of her idol and mentor Pat Summitt – perhaps the best to ever do it.

By the time Mulkey was settling into her first head coaching job at Baylor, back when she shopped off the rack and hyphenated her ex-husband’s last name, I was a student reporter on the Missouri women’s basketball beat. And even then, Mulkey stood out in a coaching cohort that included Texas’ Jody Conradt, Texas Tech’s Marsha Sharp and other living legends. You knew it was a matter of time before Mulkey turned Waco into a title town, starting by signing a spectacular Vincentian-American big named Sophia Young. Within three years, Mulkey led Baylor to the 2005 national championship and Young was named the tournament’s most outstanding player.

Weeks after the confetti fell in 2005, I caught up with Mulkey in New York as she was leaving a dinner honoring the winning men’s and women’s college hoops coaches. She couldn’t have been nicer, more patient or gracious – perhaps because she was still the new kid on the block and Summitt, her idol, was the dominant woman on the sideline. And while the success that has come with three more national titles has stretched Mulkey’s ego, some part of me wonders if she became a lightning rod in part to fill some of the void Summitt left after her death in 2016.

That’s not to forgive Mulkey’s transgressions. She could have vouched for Brittney Griner (still the best player she has ever coached) when the Baylor great was stuck in a Russian prison. She could have thought twice before defending the sexual assault and Title IX scandal that shook Baylor and took down the once untouchable football coach Art Briles. (“If somebody’s around you, and they ever say, ‘I will never send my daughter to Baylor,’” she said on court after earning her 500th victory, “you knock them right in the face.”) She could have been far less dismissive of gay players. She could have done more to stop Clark from going off on Monday than just defending her straight up with Hailey Van Lith, the undersized LSU guard doomed to everlasting meme-hood despite giving her best possible effort. If anyone on LSU was going to cover Clark one-on-one, you’d expect it would be the standout Flau’jae Johnson – who’s not only taller and more dynamic but also came into Monday’s game expecting Clark to be her assignment. “There’s not a lot of strategy,” Mulkey said of her defense after Monday’s game. “You’ve got to guard her. Nobody else seems to be able to guard her. We didn’t even guard her last year when we beat them.”

By and large, Mulkey comes off less like a cartoon baddie than the blinkered mama bear whose only concern is for the cubs under her charge. That much came through in her non-answer to the anthem question (Who’d want to further fan the flames after the tournament she just had?), and in her justified reaction to the UCLA column. When a tearful LSU star Angel Reese revealed some of the horrors she’s endured since the team won last year’s title in bold fashion, I couldn’t help but recall the lengths Mulkey went to shield Reese from the press after holding out her best player for the first few games of the season. “Those kids are like my children,” she said at the time, “and I’m not going to tell you what you don’t need to know. That’s just the way I address things.” It goes a long way to explaining why a parent might still send their daughter to play for her.

No doubt the scrutiny of Mulkey will only become more intense as interest around women’s basketball grows. And that scrutiny will most likely reveal a coach in a strange position: a polarizing figure who doesn’t quite settle on either pole. One minute, she’s being touted as a Maga darling; the next, she’s being bashed as a woke warrior. On one hand, she has been less than progressive on matters such as sexuality and gender-based violence and grumbled about the media and journalists in a similar manner to many on the right. On the other, she has led an LSU team of mostly Black women to a national title, has defended her players against sexism and now finds herself a target of the same people who attacked Colin Kaepernick around the national anthem. And maybe that ambiguity is down to the fact that all Mulkey really cares about – all she has ever really known – is the ruthless pursuit of winning basketball games. In Mulkey’s world, anything else, for better or worse, is superfluous.