Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green said Thursday that he believes his tweets about women’s sports and the pay-gap with male athletes have been “extremely misconstrued,” saying in part, “I am on their side.”
Green spoke about the topic one day after U.S. women’s national team star Megan Rapinoe ripped his remarks, saying it was “unfortunate” that an athlete in Green’s position didn’t have a more informed opinion.
On Thursday night, Green gave a passionate, rambling response on the topic that lasted more than 10 minutes, repeatedly stating that he is “in support” of what Rapinoe is doing and is hopeful he can help women’s sports.
“At the end of the day, what Megan wants and what I want is the same thing,” Green said. “And if she believes that doing something a certain way gets her to the end goal, I’m all for that. And if I believe doing something a certain way gets to the end goal, I’m all for that. So if we can both do something to move the needle to get to the end goal, great.
“I have no complaints with whatever it is that she wants to do or any woman athlete. Or anyone that’s trying to help drive their cause and what they want to be done. It doesn’t really matter to me how you get there. What does matter to me is that we get there.”
In his tweets posted on March 27, Green, in part, blamed women for making “complaints” rather than taking action over disparities in pay and investment in women’s sports.
Green said Thursday that the tweets didn’t fully capture the points he was trying to get across.
“A lot of what I said in the tweet — you can’t really make out my full position from my tweets,” he said. “Which was intentional because I don’t want you to make out my full position from a tweet. What I want to do is I want to raise awareness with my tweets. I want to have these conversations to help get over here to the side of good, to the side that we’re all trying to get to, to the side that we want to see these women get.”
On a Zoom call Wednesday ahead of this summer’s Olympics in Tokyo, Rapinoe told reporters that Green’s tweets were misguided. She pointed out that she and many other female athletes have long been doing many of the things Green said they needed to stand up for.
“That’s frustrating that’s the take you have,” Rapinoe said of Green’s tweets. “You obviously showed your whole ass in not even understanding what we all talk about all the time — WNBA players and us on the national team. … You don’t think we asked for more money? I mean, what are we screaming about? Nonstop!”
Green said Thursday that he was “encouraged” to hear Rapinoe’s response to his remarks and didn’t take offense to her opinions.
“We all don’t have to think the same thing or take the same path to get to a result, that’s just not realistic,” he said. “We all don’t have to take that path, so if her path that she’s going to take is different to get to the result or the path that I want to help take is different to get to the result, as long as we’re both working towards the same result, I have no issue with that.”