Draymond GreenĀ has some advice for women athletes fighting for equal pay: stop complaining and take action.
TheĀ three-time All Star made the controversial comments during a recent video interview with Kerith Burke, an NBC Sports Bay Area reporter who pressed Green on his previous tweets regarding the gender wage gap within sports. Green insisted heĀ fully supported higher pay for women athletes, but believedĀ they simply werenāt doing enough to achieve that goal.
āIām really tired of seeing them complain about the lack of pay, because theyāre doing themselves a disservice by just complaining,ā he said Wednesday. āTheyāre not laying out steps that they can take to change that. Itās coming off as a complaint because the people thatĀ can change it are just going to continue to say, āWell, the revenue isnāt there. So if you donāt bring in the revenue, we canāt up your pay.ā Theyāre going to keep using that, but the reality is, as true as that is, itās an excuse. Because everyone says, āWe support women. We support womenās empowerment. We support women in the workplace. We do this for women. We do X for women. Blah, blah, blah. And everyone uses it to their advantage, yet these women are not using these people who are saying these very things to their advantage.ā
The comments came just days after Green took to Twitter to addressĀ the massive pay gapĀ between NBA and WNBA players. According to NBC Sports, the average WNBA salary is a little less than $100,000, while the average NBA salary is more than $7 million. Green acknowledged that WNBA revenue was just a fraction of what the NBA racked in, but saidĀ the latter organization managed to achieveĀ that success by building a platform and tellingĀ āindividual stories,ā which is something he hasnāt seen within the WNBA.
Green then pointed toĀ Phoenix Mercury player Diana Taurasi, suggesting her talent was often overlooked because people didnāt know her story, and therefore had no personal connection with her.
Soccer star Megan Rapinoe responded to Greenās assessment in a series of tweets, arguing that the stories of women athletes are largely ignored due to inequality.Ā