Golden State Warriors veteran Draymond Green said Thursday that he believes his tweets about women’s sports and the pay gap with male athletes were misinterpreted, telling reporters, “I am on their side,” according to ESPN’s Nick Friedell.
His tweets, essentially, blamed women for complaining rather than taking action over disparities in pay between men and women.
Green clarified his posts after U.S. women’s national team forward Megan Rapinoe criticized his comments, saying it was “unfortunate” that he didn’t have a more informed opinion on the matter.
The 31-year-old said he is in support of what Rapinoe and many other women are doing to advance women’s sports.
“At the end of the day, what Megan wants and what I want is the same thing,” Green said, according to ESPN. “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.”
Rapinoe and the U.S. women’s national team have been fighting for equal pay and working conditions for years. In December, the U.S. women settled part of the gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The agreement gives the women an improvement in hotel accommodations, venues, travel and staffing that puts them on equal grounds with players on the men’s national team.
The team’s fight for equal pay continues, though, after a federal judge pointed to differences in the structure of the men’s and women’s contracts to reject the women’s team’s equal-pay claim.
