Sport & Story Daily April 1, 2024

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April 1, 2024

Good morning! “The Kim Mulkey Way” Bombshell

The Kim Mulkey Way: The LSU Coach Holds Grudges, Battles Everyone — and Keeps Winning. But at What Cost?
As the Washington Post’s Kent Babb writes in this highly-anticipated piece, “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.”
^{washingtonpost.com}

The Adam Project: Decoding the Clandestine NBA Rights Auction
As Puck’s John Ourand writes, “What makes this NBA negotiation even more fascinating, though, is the presence of the deep-pocketed—in some cases trillion-dollar-plus market capitalization—tech companies. Indeed, while Disney, Comcast, and WBD all have pretty straightforward motivations for landing NBA rights, the tech streamers have very distinct enticements. Representatives from Amazon, Apple, Google, and Netflix have all approached their NBA talks in different ways, which neatly express their ultimate end goal and the manifold value of the NBA product.”
^puck.news

Amazon Prime Joins Fight Game With Premier Boxing Champions PPV
As Sportico’s Jason Clinkscales reports, “Amazon’s ambitions in live sports could not have been made clearer when it bought the exclusive rights for Thursday Night Football in 2022. Over the years, Prime Video has also scored rights to top-flight soccer, cricket and basketball leagues in various global markets. Yet the streamer made an overlooked but significant multiyear rights agreement in late 2023 with Premier Boxing Champions, the boxing series created by longtime manager Al Haymon.”
^sportico.com

Report: Marc Lore 'Walked Away' From Option to Buy the T'Wolves
Per SBJ, T'Wolves minority owner Marc Lore “largely walked away” from his option to buy control of the team, leaving it to fellow minority owner Alex Rodriguez, according to sources cited by Kosman & Glasspiegel of the N.Y. POST. Sources said that if the deal closed, Lore “would have become the owner of the team with his pal and co-investor Rodriguez taking a more secondary role.” Yet, Lore “did not want to invest much” of the $520M needed for him and Rodriguez to “increase their stake in the team, along with co-investors,” from 40 to 80% by Wednesday’s deadline.
^{sportsbusinessjournal.com}

College Basketball’s Biggest Stars on Social Media are Women: Data Viz
Per Sportico: “Leading the way is LSU’s Angel Reese with 2.7 million followers. That’s not only far more than all 15 men’s Wooden finalists combined (960,000), but it’s also more than NBA superstar Anthony Edwards (2 million) and not too far off from phenom and NBA Rookie of the Year favorite Victor Wembanyama (3.7 million).” 
^sportico.com

A’s Face Uphill Battle: Fans Protest on Opening Day As Vegas Move Looms
As FOS’ Eric Fisher writes, “A’s fans again made their voices heard, and with force, on Opening Day, signaling what a long and difficult year it will likely be for the MLB club. 

“The A’s drew an announced attendance of 13,522 for their season opener Thursday against the Guardians, easily the smallest crowd of any opener across the league and roughly half of Oakland’s total for its 2023 opener. But while the turnout was sparse inside the Coliseum, thousands of fans gathered in the stadium’s parking lot to voice their displeasure with the planned move of the A’s to Las Vegas.”
^{frontofficesports.com}

COLUMN: Why Are Mid-Major Hoops Coaches the Current Trend for Bigger Hires? Wren Baker Has Some Thoughts
“There’s always a risk when you hire a (Power Five level) assistant,” Wren Baker said. “The job has become so much harder and so much more complex today with the transfer portal and NIL. There’s probably more weight given to the people who have actually managed the portal and NIL, right?
^{dominionpost.com}

More Fallout From the Kim Mulkey Article; This Time From Baylor WBB Coach Nicki Collen
As reported by Brenna Greene on Twitter: “Today in the article about Kim Mulkey, Kent Babb said after Mulkey left the Baylor program was ‘left to wither’ and ‘no longer among the sports' top tier’.

“Unprompted, Baylor HC Nicki Colleen [sic] had some thoughts about that postgame: ‘I'm not afraid to say I was really offended by the article that came out. I didn't read any of it. Don't know what happened, but nothing's withering in Waco. Nothing is withering in Waco... We are not not a first tier team and you can't say we are. You can't get to the Sweet 16 and take a #1 seed down to the wire in a one possession game and say anything is withering in Waco... There's some stuff blooming in Waco. If he wants to come do an article and come to Waco and write about it next year, he's welcome.’"
^twitter.com

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