The Hall of Famers :: Jeanne McNulty-King

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.