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Megan Rapinoe Explained Why Draymond Green’s Views On Women’s Sports Miss The Mark

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Perhaps the most highly-anticipated college basketball game that took place on Saturday came when UConn and Iowa squared off in the Women’s NCAA Tournament. So much of the anticipation came from the true freshman matchup between the Huskies’ Paige Bueckers and the Hawkeyes’ Caitlin Clark, and while the game was not especially close — No. 1 UConn beat No. 5 Iowa, 92-72 — these two going toe-to-toe was a glimpse at one of the best individual rivalries that the sport of basketball will have for the next few decades, even if both are close friends.

In the aftermath of the game, Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green took to Twitter to discuss women’s sports. Namely, he wanted to discuss how it, as an entity, could grow in prominence, specifically mentioning the conversation around unequal pay.

Green’s broad point, told through a series of tweets that he didn’t know how to thread: Focusing on pay and not unlocking ways to increase revenue by “telling INDIVIDUAL stories and building up the interest in the players.”

As a potential example of this, Green wondered why Bueckers does not declare for the 2021 WNBA Draft, saying that while he understands she is not eligible by the terms laid out by the league’s CBA, he believes this would be the kind of norm-shattering event that takes power from leagues and gives it to players.

Now, even if Green’s intentions are not coming from a bad place, he does show his overall ignorance on the subject by suggesting the issue is that women athletes are not doing everything they can to promote change. An expert in this field, USWNT star and fervent advocate for equality in sports Megan Rapinoe, saw what Green had to say and issued a response.

Among other things, Rapinoe made the point that there is only so far that folks like her and the USWNT can take their battle on their own, saying that “change cannot be made if the only people who care about the change enough are the ones who are suffering the most from it.”

Green went on to say that stories involving women athletes, mentioning Diana Taurasi, are not told. Rapinoe then responded by saying this is not because Taurasi doesn’t have a compelling story or there haven’t been attempts to tell it, but rather, because no one wants to tell it.

Rapinoe might be the authority on these sorts of things — she went to Washington this week on Equal Pay Day to testify in front of Congress and visit the White House alongside USWNT teammate Midge Purce — so it would behoove Green to both listen to what she has to say and do what he can do as one of the most prominent athletes in the United States to be part of the solution here.