Screenshot Courtesy of Philip Lewis/Twitter
Two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner’s college coach, Kim Mulkey, rubbed many people the wrong way after refusing to send kind words toward Griner’s way during a press conference on Monday, Sept. 26.
A reporter asked the former Baylor and now LSU coach about her thoughts on Brittney Griner’s situation and noted that he hadn’t seen or heard anything from her.
“And you won’t,” Mulkey shamelessly answered.
Many people speculated that the response had something to do with Mulkey’s distaste for the LGBTQ+ community. An Outsports reporter interviewed
Mulkey in 2012 and asked her if she “ever had a gay player” on her team.The former Baylor coach responded, “Don’t ask me that. I don’t ask that. I don’t think it’s anybody’s business. Whoever you are. I don’t care to know that.”
She continued by saying that a player’s sexuality didn’t matter to her. The reporter then stated how disappointing it was for Baylor fans to treat Griner poorly. Mulkey remarked how she adored the respectful fans and hated that some fans threw “personal taunts” at Griner, but the eight-time WNBA All-Star had to ignore them during games.
In 2013, Griner revealed to ESPN that she was discouraged from outing herself as a lesbian because the former Baylor coach told her it would hurt recruiting.
“It was a recruiting thing,” Griner told ESPN. “The coaches thought that if it seemed like they condoned it, people wouldn’t let their kids come play for Baylor.”
According to Griner, the entire Baylor team knew she was gay, including Mulkey, who told her it wasn’t an issue but still frowned upon informing the public about it.
“It was more of [an] unwritten law [to not discuss sexuality] … it was just kind of, like, one of those things, you know, just don’t do it,” Griner stated. “They kind of tried to make it, like, ‘Why put your business out on the street like that?”
Per a previous NewsOnyx report, Russian judge Anna Sotnikova sentenced Griner to nine years in prison on Aug. 4 for drug possession and smuggling. She was detained in February at the Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow for attempting to smuggle vape cartridges containing cannabis oil, which Russia deems illegal.