The Hall of Famers: Part I Jeanne McNulty King Inducted

Whitehall native Jeanne McNulty-King was recently inducted into the 2023 Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame. Here, in this two-part story, you'll get an inside look at the life of a Hall of Famer.

It's a July morning in Coeur d'Alene and Jeanne McNulty-King is on the go. On the move. Making things happen, making dreams come true. Just another day in her world.

She's been up since 5 a.m. It's part of the deal when you're an agent and you have basketball players in Europe needing your help, coaches and clubs looking to fill rosters for the upcoming season with the right pieces, which they know she has. It's her busiest time of the year.

Her day will go long, maybe only until midnight this time. She has players in Australia as well, coaches who look to her, people asking for a few minutes here and there, her availability needing to match time zones around the world, no matter what her own watch says. She's not 9-to-5. Can't be.

That's why players who want a shot at professional basketball come to her in the first place, why college coaches point them in her direction. They know what they are going to get. It's a reliability and trustworthiness that can be rare qualities to find in her profession.

"I've talked to a lot of coaches over the years. They say, I don't know if you know this but your sister is one of the best female sports agents in the world for women's basketball," says McNulty-King's brother, John. "She's in it because she loves it."

She came by it accidentally, when former Lady Griz Greta Koss got on with the Utah Starzz in the summer of 1997, in the first year of the WNBA. First, she was on the team's developmental squad. Then, Koss got called up to the active roster.

It was a lot to take in for a small-town girl from Malta and Koss was by nature quiet and shy. Her friend, McNulty-King, kept on her. What's the situation with your contract? Have you talked to them about it? Why are you waiting?

Koss asked, will you call for me? Could you? McNulty-King did. They asked if she was Koss's agent. A long pause followed. "I said, yeah. Swear to God," she says. And an agent was born.

Having Robin Selvig in her corner helped, at least at the start. He reached out to all his coaching contacts in the women's college game, opening doors around the country just a crack. It was up to McNulty-King to go through them, to win those coaches over.

She went to Final Fours year after year, worked the lobbies, bypassing the players and going right to the coaches, developing trust, handshake by handshake.

"I remember the first time talking to Jeanne," says Iowa State women's basketball coach Bill Fennelly. "You can tell right away the agents or people you deal with who are in it sincerely for the kids and the families and the ones who are in it because they want to add to their client base.

"The No. 1 thing is that Jeanne does it because she loves the people she works for and with. She does it for the right reasons. She is emotionally attached to the people she works with. I think that's why she does such a unique and special job.

"Every kid that I've had that had the ability to move to another level, I've always said, you need to talk to Jeanne. It's their decision, but I make sure they talk to Jeanne. It's really been a good situation for us."

McNulty-King wouldn't be the agent she is without having experienced the lows and highs of playing overseas herself. She learned how bad it can be, to feel deserted, a young woman in a strange country where you don't speak the language and no agent to fight for you. And she learned how good it can be.

She was the Big Sky Conference MVP as a fifth-year senior, in 1989-90, when she averaged more than 20 points per game for a Lady Griz team that went 27-3 and went to its sixth NCAA tournament.

That fall, after graduating, she departed for Spain with nothing but a bag and a bunch of promises she held as truths. She had been raised in Stevensville and Whitehall, and played in the safe cocoon of Selvig's Lady Griz teams. Now it was time for a real-world education.

When she arrived, the club took her return ticket and her passport, just for safekeeping she assumed, so she wouldn't lose them. Her agent? He collected his money and was gone, never to be heard from again. Her apartment? There was no hot water, no heat, windows were cracked or broken.

She told the team about it, what she had been promised, and what she actually had. No es mi problema.

Frantic, she picked up a phone, pretended she was talking to a lawyer, was able to get her passport back, was able to travel two hours to Santiago, where she found out the club had called ahead and canceled her plane ticket out of the country.

With no money and no ticket, she somehow talked her way onto flights that got her to New York, where she vowed she would never step foot outside the U.S. ever again. It was 10 days she'll never forget, an experience she would never wish on another player.

The following spring, her views had softened, the itch to give it one more shot remained. She got on with a team in Sydney, Australia, lived with an American family, had the time of her life. It was an experience she'll never forget, one she wishes for every player she represents.

Bad experiences continue, of course. "That would be an understatement," says Fennelly, whose program had two players taken in the first 19 picks in April's WNBA draft. "In any industry, when there is money involved and you can take advantage of people, it happens.

"A lot of it happens in the women's game. They get contracts overseas, they are out of the country and they are promised things and it doesn't work out. Now you're stuck somewhere, not getting paid. When those things happen, the players suffer, the families suffer."

That's what motivates McNulty-King, to do her part to make sure it never happens, not to her players.

If you're arranging a family reunion or planning a wedding and you want McNulty-King there, particularly when she's at her busiest, you better guarantee cell service and a strong wifi signal or she will pass on your RSVP. She would love to, but her girls might need her. She's that invested.

She skipped out on one reunion this past summer. The location was perfect. Remote. Private. Off the grid. Disconnected from the rest of the world.

She thought about how fun it would be. Then she thought about that player, the one in Spain, her, fearful, who needed someone to talk to, someone to help her get out of a bad situation. She can't let that person down. She needs to be there for her.

She keeps her client list small for that reason, somewhere from 35 to 50. "It's always been small and connected," says Fennelly. "There is a personal touch. When someone has an issue, it's not, hey, I'll get back to you next week.

"Some of it stems from being part of a program like Montana, playing for Coach Selvig, who is a hall of fame person, a hall of fame coach. That was in her DNA. When you are part of something as unique and special as Lady Griz basketball, you take that into other parts of your life and want to help people."

That's why she's here, of course, or will be, preparing for Friday night's Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony, partly from her work as an agent, helping more than two dozen former Lady Griz continue playing, mostly from her own days as a player.

She was one of the brightest lights in the golden era of the program, when it had gone from upstart in the early 1980s to dominant force later that decade.

She was a freshman in 1985-86, a senior in 1989-90, with a redshirt season thrown right in the middle, in 1987-88 thanks to a shoulder injury that wouldn't heal without surgery.

She returned with a vengeance, scoring more than 1,000 points her last two years, employing her patented turnaround jump shot on opponent after opponent, the echo of Bob O'Conner's voice rising above the thousands who filled Dahlberg Arena night after night. Barbed wire!

Has there been a better, more fitting nickname for a Lady Griz player? Ever? "Jeanne was a heck of a player. Played on great teams," said Selvig. "You never know for sure, but it didn't surprise me she had the career she had. She was such a good athlete."

She was a three-time state champion in the high jump at Whitehall High, led the Trojans to a Class B basketball title as a junior, averaged 25.5 points, 14.0 rebounds as a senior, then arrived in Missoula with that turnaround jump shot.

Didn't matter where she got the ball, what direction she was facing, where the basket was. She could rise, turn her body until she was square with the basket and use her high release to get her shot off against anyone, other than that 6-foot-8 Texas Longhorn she faced in the 1989 NCAA tournament.

It was unorthodox in a program that did things fundamentally. Uh-oh. "When I got to campus, Rob was, what the hell? We have to get rid of this," McNulty-King recalls. She would go on to score 1,327 career points, shooting 48.5 percent. Selvig was stubborn but not stupid. With numbers like that, he let it be.

"She was real difficult to defend because her shot was so high and extended. Didn't make any difference what size person was on her. She had the ability to shoot over people," he says. "High release, jumps and fades a little.

"If she got the ball where she could score, she was going to score, no matter who we were playing." Her brother, John, says, "I always told her, shoot to get hot and shoot to stay hot."

Ah, family, nuclear or athletics-made, it's the thing that's defined McNulty-King through the years. Today it's her own, husband David, an orthopedic surgeon, and sons Connor and Chandler, both enrolled at TCU, the former an aspiring basketball coach, the other a future physical therapist.

And then she has her girls, her players spread across the globe, the ones she cares for like daughters, always protecting, always fighting for. "The longevity of her career speaks to her loyalty," says former Lady Griz Krista Redpath, who used McNulty-King to play professionally in Copenhagen.

"She is extremely loyal with her players and treats them as family. That has certainly served her well."

Despite playing in the program more than three decades ago, she is the glue that holds generations of Lady Griz together. When Selvig retired in 2016, who was it that organized a surprise party that drew more than 100 of his former players to celebrate and to say thank you? McNulty-King.

"Jeanne's playing days were exceptional but how she's remained committed to the Lady Griz program, spanning over many decades, has been admirable," says Redpath. "It speaks to how passionate she is about our program."

Family is at the heart of her own story, how Bill and Peggy, both from Butte, who met in the hospital, he arriving after an accident, she on duty as a nurse, had five boys, the fourth arriving when the oldest was still just three.

When John, son No. 5 arrived, Peggy did what she could to at least pretend she had delivered what she had been longing for. "They wanted a girl so bad," John says. "When she had me, she made me grow my hair out. I had brown-blond curls."

Four years passed, just Bill and Peggy and the five boys. Imagine. "Chaos. Every meal was like the last supper, everybody for themselves," recalls John. In the background, Peggy, singing "They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love," her go-to, countering the arguments, the fighting, the boys being boys.

We are one in the spirit, we are one in the Lord ... KEVIN, PUT HIM DOWN! ... We will work with each other, we will work side by side ... BOYS! TAKE IT OUTSIDE! ... Yeah, they'll know we are Christians by our love ... WHO DID THAT!? WHO BROKE THAT!?

Continued in next week's paper