Mulkey needs one more lesson to be among all-timers

There aren’t many names in sports right now, either college or professional, that are generating headlines quite like LSU women’s basketball head coach Kim Mulkey currently is.
The veteran coach and proud owner of four basketball national championship wins is a lot of things.
Flamboyant in her dress. Straightforward in her tutelage of her players. Perhaps abrasive and opinionated with the media.
She’s all of those things. She’s also a proven winner, to the tune of 723 wins and only 118 career losses. For my non-math people, that’s a win 86 percent of the time in her 24 years of experience as a head coach.
You can’t get 86 percent odds anywhere else in life, so I’d say she’s done pretty well for herself in the wins and losses department.
For all the wins, however, there are the heads and tails of the Mulkey story.
For some players, they are fiercely loyal and will not have a bad word to say about her.
For others, there are potential horror stories about how she’s treated players pertaining to their personal attractions.
Whether it was a response to players in a same-sex relationship, her response to the infamous sexual assault scandal that occurred during her time at Baylor or the extremely frayed relationship between her and her most famous player, Brittney Griner, it goes without saying that she hasn’t ruffled her fair share of feathers over the years.
Ruffles and feathers fit the Mulkey fashion motif. I’m not sure they have their place when coaching college athletics.
However, all of these allegations are ones I can’t say to be true one way or the other. I’ve never experienced who Kim Mulkey is behind closed doors.
What I can speak to, however, is the way she handles adversity within the media.
Coaching at the highest levels comes with more than its fair share of pressures, criticisms and judgments. It’s just part of the job.
Things will go wrong. Things will go sideways. Questions will not always be the ones that want to be heard. Sometimes, it’s the ones that need to be heard that are gotten.
She’s well within her rights to be upset, frustrated, angry, offended … whatever she wants.
However for all the wins, success, flamboyant outfits and sound bites that come with the Mulkey Experience there is one final piece of the puzzle that needs to be put into place.
It’s utterly important that a coach gets the trust and love of their players to perform at the highest levels. I’ve got no doubt that Mulkey has that in her locker rooms.
However, for every great through the years, there are two sides to every coin.
Bob Knight in men’s college basketball is probably the closest comparison within reason. They coached similar sports, were similarly abrasive with media and both won a ton of games.
However, Knight’s run-ins and incidents were of a more physical nature at their worst. So, it’s an imperfect comparison. There was the argument at the end of the day that he won.
There is also the famously cold Nick Saban. A man who, despite his short and terse answers within the media, seemed to maximize his player’s loyalty and won a ton. To the tune of being called the greatest to ever do it in college football.
Short with the media? Sure. Out of line? I’m not so sure. Perhaps just not as helpful as media members would’ve liked him to be.
Be it Mulkey, Knight or Saban, the common thread seems to be that winning cures all the evils.
However, for all their success, there are the John Wooden’s of the world. The Gregg Popovich’s. The Andy Reid’s. All coaches who maximized their players and did so with a level of introspection and perspective while treating the ancillary people around them with the level of respect that is deserved.
It might be too late in the game. They say you can’t teach old dogs new tricks. However, for Mulkey to truly be regarded as the best to ever do it, she has to learn to adapt her game to be more Saban, Wooden or Popovich and less Knight.
Respect matters in the long run. And you can have as much of it as you need within a locker room. But, at the end of the day, if Mulkey truly wants to be regarded as one of the best to ever do it in the larger court of public opinion, she needs to learn that trick.
After all, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.