The Nuns Who Love Chris Mullin

On a Saturday in early February, the St. John’s men’s basketball team hosted the Butler Bulldogs, a Big East rival. It had snowed much of the morning, but Carnesecca Arena was packed to the rafters; among those in attendance was Lou Carnesecca, the gym’s namesake, a onetime head coach at St. John’s and a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Carnesecca spent the first half passing around a worn glamour shot of the team’s current coach, Chris Mullin, who played for Carnesecca at St. John’s before going to the N.B.A. Mullin became an All-Star for the Golden State Warriors and earned a spot on the famous 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team; he’s in the Hall of Fame, too. Among the fans that Carnesecca passed Mullin’s photo to were a pair of nuns, sitting, in their habits, just a few rows in front of the former coach. Sister Mary Mercedes and Sister Mary Terence—or Merce and Kathryn, as the thirty or so Mullin family members in the crowd called them—hadn’t been to St. John’s since 1985. They were back for the same reason they attended then: to support Chris. When he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, in 2011, he invited both women to the ceremony, and even mentioned them during his speech: “At my age, and you’ve still got two ninety-year-old nuns praying for you, you know life is very good,” he said.