As day dawned, the NCAA Ladies’s Basketball Match had gone by its opening video games, of which 31 have been received by the upper seed … and Kim Mulkey. Sure, the Bayou Bengals additionally received, however so did Kim Mulkey. She is taking over the burgeoning girls’s basketball market by making the match all about her as a result of, as a lot as she is aware of in regards to the sport, the factor she is aware of finest is herself.
In different phrases, do your worst, Caitlin Clark. Mulkey’s shrill self-absorption is prepared for you as a result of she’s been making girls’s school basketball about herself for years now, identical to the late Bob Knight did.
By now you’ve got seen the presser wherein she threatened to sue The Washington Submit and reporter Kent Babb, complaining that she’d been approached for an interview by Babb two years in the past whereas complaining that he gave her two days to answer one remaining request. In different phrases, she had simply 720 days to answer a request that she had solely two days to answer, and the unfairness of such an advance request satisfied her to hijack consideration from her personal staff by blaming Babb for hijacking consideration from her personal staff. Give her this a lot: She does have the I-Blame-You-For-What-I-Did recreation in addition to the basketball stuff.
As we do not but know what are the specifics contained inside Babb’s story, guessing at it appears unfair—to everybody besides Mulkey, who is aware of precisely what it is about as a result of it is crucial factor in her life proper now. She is, in that manner, the preternatural school coach, ensuring that she is the story irrespective of how a lot the precise video games attempt to intrude on her stage. And since she is totally and aggressively ready to take care of your deal with her, she’s going to accomplish that as usually as she must as a result of, even within the turbulent new panorama of faculty sports activities, it is nonetheless a recreation by coaches, for coaches, and about coaches as a result of coaches are the one factor that keep the identical irrespective of what number of instances school sports activities attempt to change.
Now it may be that Mulkey is amongst these few coaches left who can nonetheless run the eye desk, however she is taking part in a very aggressive recreation with Babb and The Submit. She solely is aware of learn how to play a method, and her efficiency yesterday was one in all her best Hey-l’m-Over-Right here reveals ever. She’s selling the sport the one manner she is aware of how—by selling herself, and selling herself by threatening individuals she perceives as weaker than her. It is a very Knight-inspired play to make, and it’ll work so long as she will be able to recruit nice gamers and win 30 video games a 12 months. However as the sport itself exponentially grows, she’ll need to work tougher to get much less and fewer consideration. Grating has a shelf life, too, and it grows shorter with each passing 12 months.
