At Harvard, Green elaborates on ‘owner’
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Speaking on Thursday afternoon to a standing-room-only crowd at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Warriors forward Draymond
Green detailed why he feels so strongly that “chairman” should replace the term “owner” in sports.
“When you look at the word ‘owner,’ it really dates back to slavery,” said Green, who spoke to several hundred students and faculty at Harvard ahead of Thursday night’s loss to the Celtics. “The word ‘owner’ and ‘master’ dates back to slavery. However it was then, if you were a slave owner, it’s kind of your job. You owned slaves. They did the work for you. You sold the cotton. We just took those words and continued to use them.”
Last month, as part of an Instagram post condemning remarks by Houston Texans CEO Bob McNair, Green wrote: “For starters, let’s stop using the word owner and maybe use the word ‘chairman.’ To be owned by someone just sets a bad precedent to start. It sets the wrong tone. It gives one the wrong mind-set.” Dallas Mavericks owner
Mark Cuban was offended by the connotation Green was seemingly trying to attach to owners in professional sports.
“For him to try to turn it into something it’s not is wrong,” Cuban told ESPN. “He owes the NBA an apology. I think he does, because to try to create some connotation that owning equity in a company that you busted your ass for is the equivalent of ownership in terms of people, that’s just wrong. That’s just wrong in every which way.”
On Nov. 4, less than 24 hours after that ESPN story with Cuban’s quotes surfaced online, Green declined to respond. But when asked Thursday by Leah
Wright Rigueur, assistant professor of public policy at the Kennedy School, about his stance on the term “owner” in sports, Green spoke passionately on the topic for more than seven minutes.
“I wasn’t going to get into a back-and-forth with Mark Cuban. That wasn’t my whole point,” Green said. “My point wasn’t to get in a back-and-forth with anyone. My point was to get in a conversation that needed to be had. When you look at Mark Cuban, for instance, with the whole equity thing and different sorts, we can all own equity and that’s fine.
“But Mark Cuban would never know or understand how it feels for me, a young ... African American, to turn on the TV and see what happened in Charlottesville. He’ll never have that feeling. When I say, ‘Hey, maybe we shouldn’t use that word,’ to be honest, I don’t expect him to understand where I’m coming from. He’ll never feel what I feel when I turn on the TV and see however many people taken down by the KKK.”
Curry teaches: Fans of the Warriors — and of basketball in general — soon will have the opportunity to take online classes with Stephen Curry.
The basketball tutorials focus heavily on ball-handling and shooting and are hosted by MasterClass, a service that provides online courses with such celebrity instructors as
Serena Williams and Alice Waters. Curry’s 15-plus classes will offer tips on “perfect shooting mechanics, ball-handling drills, scoring techniques, and game-film analysis.” For Warriors fans, the video analysis might be the most fun. Based on promos for the classes, Curry talks viewers through his game film with the Warriors.
“I hope through this MasterClass people see the way that I play, and hopefully understand how I got there,” Curry told ESPN. “It’s a lot of time that I put into it, and it’s not like I just woke up one day and was like, ‘You know what, I just want to start shooting and doing all these crazy things on the floor.’ If kids work on it, or if they put the time in like I did, they can do that, too.”