Rapinoe doesn’t complain, she just dominates
When we ponder who is the most significant athlete of the modern era, the answer is always a man. Say, Lebron James. At one time it might have been Tiger Woods. Long ago it was Muhammad Ali.
A number of women should have been more prominent in that conversation in years past and weren’t. It’s time for that to change. That realization jumped out at me in the last few days when Megan Rapinoe, America’s greatest soccer player and a product of Elk Grove youth sports, called out one of the NBA’S biggest tough guys and basically got him to back down.
A quick reset: Draymond Green, the fierce and outspoken big man for the Golden State Warriors, had criticized WNBA players for complaining about lack of equal pay, saying the women should do more and talk less about it.
In a series of tweets last month he said the complaints were falling on deaf ears “because y’all keep saying pay me more, with no way to drive the revenue. Force hands!”
He tried to thread the needle more in explaining his comments to reporters. “I’m really tired of seeing them complain about the lack of pay, because they are doing themselves a disservice by just complaining,” Green said.
Rapinoe was having none of it.
“You (Green) obviously showed your whole ass in not even understanding what we all talk about all the time,” Rapinoe said in response to Green’s bad take on what women athletes should be doing with their careers.
The truth is: Rapinoe and her colleagues with the U.S. national soccer team have done a lot more than complain about a lack of pay compared to American men. They have spent years taking on the U.S. soccer bureaucracy. They unsuccessfully sued U.S. soccer and yet vow to fight despite a judge dismissing key arguments in their lawsuit.
During this fight, U.S. women have continued to dominate their sport. What frustration and disappointment they have felt about their own soccer federation has not diluted their play.
Rapinoe’s stellar soccer play
Rapinoe taking on Green is a case in point. After throwing down with Green, Rapinoe scored a late goal Saturday to salvage a draw with rival Sweden as the American women prepare for the Tokyo Olympics. It
was Rapinoe's sixth goal this year, which makes her the United States' leading scorer. The draw preserved a 38-game unbeaten streak for the American women.
Oh, and two days before Rapinoe saved her team the way significant athletes do, Green said: “At the end of the day, what Megan wants and what I want is the same thing. 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.”
And that was the end of that.
The point isn't that Green is a bad guy. He's not. The point is that he was uninformed. He has a huge platform, his comments needed a response from someone with a big platform and Rapinoe was that someone.
She kept her team from losing on the field and kept her sport from being disrespected off the field. That's power that few athletes wield.
Not new to controversy Rapinoe is not new to sports, struggle and controversy. She is 35, a winger with dramatic magenta hair, and her teams have won Olympic gold in 2012, a World Cup in 2015 and successfully defended it in 2019.
She is a local and national legend. Her mom used to drive her 300 miles round trip to Elk Grove so Rapinoe could play elite club soccer instead of her Redding high school team.
This controversy was not Megan Rapinoe's first rodeo. She has been taking brave stands while starring on the field like few other athletes in any sport.
Rapinoe took a knee during the national anthem to show her solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, the former 49ers quarterback who began kneeling during the anthem in 2016 to protest police brutality. She was raised in one of the most conservative cities in California. Yet Rapinoe knelt while her teammates didn't.
“White people were mad,” she told the Guardian. “Whew, were they mad.”
She didn't back down over the kneeling. She didn't back down when former President Donald Trump directed shrill tweets at her in 2019 and that made her braver than just about every Republican politician around who still fears Trump to this day.
Not Rapinoe. “Psssh, I'm not going to the f---- White House,” she said at the time. “I meant with all the inflection and all of the sort of attitude that I gave with it, I meant all of it and every word of it.” All she regretted was cursing, saying her mom would be upset with that..
What did Rapinoe do on the field amid the Trump controversy, in the 2019 World Cup?
She scored two goals to help beat Spain in the first elimination game the Americans played in that tournament. She scored two goals in a quarterfinal win over France, the host country of the World Cup. And she scored America's first goal in a 2-0 World Cup final victory over the Netherlands.
She won the Golden Ball at the World Cup for top player and the Golden Boot for top goal scorer. She's won the Women's Ballon d'or, given to the best player in the world.
Last month, she did go to the White House, joining President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden for an Equal Pay Day event. She stated directly and clearly: “I have been devalued, I've been disrespected and dismissed because I am a woman.”
Rapinoe is married to Sue Bird, one of the top players in the WNBA.
How many of the best American male athletes in our top team sports have lived openly gay lives without fear? Exactly none.
Rapinoe's sexuality doesn't define her and neither does her gender. She's objectively the most significant American athlete of the moment because of her performance on the world stage for living a fearless, consequential life off of it.
She's not afraid of U.S. Soccer, Trump, racists, homophobes or Draymond Green. She schooled him because there is simply no one like her. That conversation about who's the most significant athlete of the modern era? She's not just in it, she dominates it.