Sports
As Draymond Green returns, can he and Warriors wind down a dynasty the right way?
In the backyard of Draymond Green’s $10 million home in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood, where white columns and a marble patio overlook the greenest of grass, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr chatted with the heartbeat of his team.
Hours earlier, the Warriors had landed in Los Angeles to a whirlwind of drama. The night before, Dec. 12 in Phoenix, Green had protested an uncalled foul by spinning and flailing his arms. He struck Suns center Jusuf Nurkić in the face, incurring a Flagrant 2 foul and automatic ejection. This was just shy of a month after his previous Flagrant 2, a five-second chokehold of Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert that landed Green a five-game suspension and a promise of harsher future league penalties.
So while the basketball world waited for the league’s latest punishment — an indefinite suspension that ended up lasting 12 games — and before the Warriors took on the host Clippers, Kerr visited Green for their latest heart-to-heart talk. These two have argued and debated. They’ve cursed each other out. They’ve strategized together. Bared their souls to one another. On this day, they cried together.
And Kerr came equipped with an appeal: “I want you to end this the right way. I want us to end this the right way.”
Discussing the end strikes a chord with Green. Kerr knew it would. He’s spent the last five years in the trenches with Green, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, warding off the inevitable. Fighting against basketball mortality. The way last season ended, and how this one has gone, they can hardly deny the end is nearing. Stalking them. They can feel its breath.
“We’re in a position where we’re getting older, trying to defend everything that we’ve done over the last decade,” Kerr said recently after practice, explaining his pitch to Green. “Let’s do it the right way. Let’s do it with dignity. Let’s do it with competitive desire. Let’s do it joyfully. What this team has been built on, and I think what attracts a lot of our fans, it’s not just the style but it’s the joy that the players feel, the competitive desire that sort of complements that. It’s been a wonderful combination.”
Since the NBA went to a two-round draft in 1989, only three players have made the Hall of Fame who were not selected in the first round: Toni Kukoč, Ben Wallace and Manu Ginobili. Two-time MVP Nikola Jokić is sure to join them. But not before Green, the No. 35 pick in the 2012 NBA Draft. His next decade was worthy of a documentary.
That’s why it’s imperative for the 33-year-old Green, who is expected to return to game action Monday and has three years and over $77 million remaining on his contract, to end his career right. Because finality with a shot of regret is too strong an elixir. Over the last 15 months, he has been choreographing a conclusion that sullies the quality of his journey. His prominence has become more about flagrants and flails, suspensions and stomps, petulance and punches.
Green’s legacy should be a glorious one. An improbable legend, a four-time NBA champion born of the rare combination of skill, intellect and toughness. The chubby kid from rusty Saginaw, Mich., forged himself into an all-time great. A testament to the capacity of will, of what sports can blossom from unlikely soils.
“He was 285 pounds when I first got him,” said Tom Izzo, who coached Green at Michigan State.
Instead, his reputation is currently more about the problems he causes than the championship solutions he has delivered. But his teammates believe, his coach believes, NBA commissioner Adam Silver and his enforcer, executive vice president Joe Dumars, believe there is a Draymond in there worth fighting to save. A legacy that deserves better punctuation.
“When I look back at these situations,” Green said last week, “it’s like, ‘Can I remove the antics?’ I am very confident I can remove the antics. And I am very confident if I do, no one is worried about how I play the game of basketball, how I carry myself in the game of basketball. It’s the antics. That’s the focus. It’s not changing who I am completely. You don’t change the spots on a leopard.”
After an altercation with the Timberwolves’ Rudy Gobert in November, Green (center) was suspended five games. A month later, he was suspended indefinitely for striking the Suns’ Jusuf Nurkić. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
Kevon Looney’s AAU coach, Shelby Parrish, was in the Bay Area visiting, not long after Looney was drafted in 2015. Looney was showing his youth coach around and, next thing he knew, Green was hanging out with coach Parrish. They talked for at least an hour.
Then Green invited Looney and his guests to hang out at Halftime Sports Bar in Oakland. In the middle of the day, they were playing dominoes with Green. Parrish had the memory of a lifetime.
“The reason that he’s allowed to yell at people,” Looney said of Green, “and get animated is because he only wants to win and he puts the time in off the court. … When I first got here, any time there was a rookie, anytime somebody new came to the team, he’s the first person to take them in and take them out. Show ’em the town. Put them in touch with the people they need to know. That’s what he did for me. All my family and friends, he made them feel comfortable, like they were his family.”
Back in October, Trayce Jackson-Davis worked out in the team’s practice facility on the ground floor of Chase Center. The rookie big man, who turns 24 in February, was still getting accustomed to life in the NBA when he learned he would start at center against Sacramento in the third preseason game. Green, sidelined with a sprained left ankle, interrupted the rookie’s workout. He gave Jackson-Davis 10 minutes of pointers on defending Kings big man Domantas Sabonis. The four-time champion schooling the No. 57 pick. Green walked through how to give Sabonis space, how to hold his ground when Sabonis lowers his shoulder or digs in his elbow, and how to get into Sabonis’ body on rebounds.
“It was great, especially how nervous I was,” Jackson-Davis said, “being so early in the season. The vets, at that time, weren’t around. We hadn’t developed relationships yet. He didn’t have to do that. But it helped. Especially in the first quarter, I guarded him really well.”
The dynamics of the Warriors, of locker rooms, of relationships within teams helps explain why, even after his laundry list of violations over the years, Green is still a Warrior. Still welcomed. Still redeemable.
Loyalty.
It sounds like an oxymoron for a player who keeps letting his team down. Green’s inability to control himself and make sure he’s available for a team that desperately needs him could be seen as disloyalty. Watching the Warriors’ defense decline significantly without him underscores how much his absence hurts the Warriors.
“Part of that complexity,” Kerr explained, “is this intense loyalty to the team and to the organization, to his coaches. He’s loyal to me. We’ve definitely had our share of run-ins, but it’s all in the name of trying to win.”
“I think the people that he trusts and he believes in, he’d die for ’em,” Izzo said. “I know that sounds like a drastic statement. I believe it. I really do.”
Green is a dichotomy. Most aren’t privy to the countless impactful moments behind the scenes. That character is behind the patience he receives within the organization. It also fuels the hope he can rectify his name.
As Looney said, “There is way more good than bad.”
Draymond Green is known for embracing his young Warriors teammates, but his punch of Jordan Poole (right) in October 2022 ran counter to that and stood out from his other incidents. (Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
The one incident Looney doesn’t get behind, the one the Warriors all agree was the most wrong Green has been, was punching Jordan Poole in October 2022. Fresh off of a summer of basking in championship glory, Green again changed the narrative about himself when he attacked Poole in practice in an altercation that escalated too far. The video leak made it a permanent mark on Green’s record.
Striking Poole wasn’t motivated by winning, or loyalty, or getting the most out of his teammates. Of all the things Green has done, it’s the sin that’s been forgiven but not forgotten. And it continues to haunt the Warriors, as the spark of the more volatile version of Green that has been suspended four times for a total of 19 games in the last 10 months.
Green wasn’t suspended for the Poole punch. At the time, the Warriors believed a suspension wasn’t enough. They wanted him to live in the discomfort he caused. They kept his locker next to Poole, perhaps hoping they would reconcile. In the end, it just kept the discomfort alive, and Green had to live with it. His punishment was having to earn back the trust.
He did eventually. But accumulation is now a factor. Earlier in his career, Green could just go dominate and shut everyone up. That’s not so easy anymore. As the antics have increased, the winning has lessened. Now that the NBA is involved and increasingly punitive, the price of his antics is greater than it’s ever been. Green’s problems have become less a caveat of success and more a barricade in the way of it.
“Part of what drives Draymond is the insecurity that we all have in us,” Kerr said. “Most people don’t really want to admit vulnerability. He’s not Steph Curry. He’s not LeBron James. He can’t just ride on, ‘Well, I’ll go get 25 tonight.’ For him to play well, he has to be all in, emotionally and physically and spiritually. And there are times where And there are times where because it’s an 82-game season with all the drama, all the BS that’s out there … it eats at him. And then he can’t just rely on that skill … so then he’ll lash out. And when he lashes out, there’s repercussions.”
If anybody could be done with Green and his antics, it’s Kerr. But they’re so much alike, which Kerr made clear to Green in that backyard talk. Kerr, a five-time NBA champion as a player, knows what’s it like to become so maddened by his competitive drive. He’s been where Green is, so he knows where Green needs to go to deal with that consuming drive.
“It’s kind of deep s—, you know, that we’re talking about,” Kerr said. “Being vulnerable. That’s one of the things I’m encouraging him to do. Be more vulnerable. Just admit you’re wrong. There’s a power in that, you know? If he does, then he doesn’t have to explain himself. And if he’s not explaining himself, I think people will have more sympathy.”
Green was expecting to be a first-round pick in 2012. He played four seasons at Michigan State, played in two Final Fours and as a senior was a consensus All-American.
But Green didn’t fit the NBA mold. He was seen as a “tweener” — a player whose combination of size and skill left him between the traditional positions. The 6-foot, 7 1/2-inch Green was considered too small to be a power forward and not athletic enough to be a small forward. None of his measurements added up to what he’s become.
But his immeasurables were off the charts. And the No. 1 attribute working on his behalf is still the thing mentioned first about him today. Draymond is synonymous with winning.
“You just don’t have that many people anymore for whom winning is the most important thing,” Izzo said. “You know, sometimes I get mad at him because his podcast takes up time. … But all these players have distractions. But with him, it’s about winning. If you need him to set a screen, get a rebound, make a pass, take a shot, never take a shot — whatever it is. I just don’t know enough people that put winning as the priority.”
When the Warriors drafted him in the second round, it was the perfect match. A franchise needing to build a winning culture landed a player with the formula it lacked. High basketball IQ. Defensive genius and leadership. Natural talent. Heart. And it was on display immediately.
“I just don’t know enough people that put winning as the priority,” Michigan State coach Tom Izzo says of Draymond Green. (Chuck Liddy / Raleigh News & Observer / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
At Summer League in 2012, the Warriors’ young players were in Las Vegas practicing and playing some high-intensity scrimmages. Harrison Barnes was the lottery pick that year. Festus Ezeli was the Warriors’ other first-round pick. Green wasn’t one of the prized young talents. Jeremy Tyler, a former high school sensation who was selected in the second round in 2011, was assigned to be Green’s mentor. That was until Tyler called a foul during the scrimmage in Las Vegas that Green thought was weak and a sign of his softness.
“He dropped him as his vet,” Barnes recalled in an interview with the Mercury News in 2015. “He said Jeremy couldn’t be his vet anymore.”
Months later, when the full team got together for pickup runs before training camp, Green was going at veteran David Lee, the Warriors’ lone All-Star at the time.
Green was this way at Civitan Recreation Center in Saginaw, when he was the little guy earning his keep on the court with the older kids. He was this way at Saginaw High, when he led his school to two state championships and a top-five national ranking as a senior. He was this way as a freshman at Michigan State, when he played six minutes in his debut and by the end of the season was a rotation player in the national championship game.
“A lot of my respect for Draymond comes from on the court,” Looney said. “I always took pride in being a tough guy, being tenacious, being relentless, always showing up and holding yourself accountable. And I always see him sacrifice the most. As a young player, I admired that. He’ll make every play.”
Before the antics, winning was Green’s clear legacy. It’s how he garnered respect, awe even. It’s his worth in a league full of bigger, more athletic and more talented players. It’s how he made four All-Star Games and earned two All-NBA nods, eight All-NBA Defense selections and a Defensive Player of the Year award.
“He’s the ultimate winner,” Kerr said. “A champion. This whole business is about winning. … Draymond, even though he can be hard to coach because of emotion, he is actually easy to coach because of his brain and his loyalty and his fight and his competitive drive. I’ll take those guys every day of the week.”
None of the Warriors’ success happens without Green. That’s the declaration in Kerr’s appeal to end the right way.
As the heartbeat, Green has shown he can will the Warriors to a higher level, but he’s also shown he can drag them into the muck. The same fire he used to help refine the Warriors into a dynasty has proven hot enough to burn what they’ve built.
Now, the journey begins, again, to see if the Warriors can rely on Green. If the reflection takes. If the counseling and growth sticks. If so, the Warriors can go out with class, celebrated for their valiance. That would fit their story, and Green’s. But they can’t end this right without him.
“My thing with him now is,” Izzo said, “can you take these last three years or whatever, and just focus in on this. Really leave the legacy that you deserve to have. And that’s as one of the greatest winners. That’s one of the tougher competitors. That’s a very good teammate.”
Part of a dynasty with Klay Thompson (center) and Stephen Curry (right), Draymond Green’s legacy should be set. That’s behind Steve Kerr’s appeal to “end this the right way.” (Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images)
(Top illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photo: Jane Tyska / Digital First Media / East Bay Times / Getty Images)
Sports
Eileen Gu reflects on decision to leave Team USA for China: ‘A lot of people just don’t understand’
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Eileen Gu released a statement on social media Monday, reflecting on her controversial decision to compete for Team China despite being born and raised in the U.S.
Gu’s statement tied the decision back to her passion for promoting women’s sports, and encouraging young girls to pursue sports.
“I gave my first speech on women in sports and title IX when I was 11 years old. I talked about being the only girl on my ski team, and, despite attending an all-girls’ school from Monday through Friday, becoming best friends with my teammates on the weekends through the common language of sport,” Gu wrote on Instagram.
Silver medalist Eileen Gu of China poses for photos after the awarding ceremony of the freestyle skiing women’s freeski big air event at the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Livigno, Italy, Feb. 16, 2026. (Photo by Wang Peng/Xinhua via Getty Images) (Wang Peng/Xinhua via Getty Images)
“At the same time, I was made painfully aware of the lack of representation – at age 9, I felt that I was somehow representing all women every time I stepped in the terrain park. Landing tricks was about more than progression … it was about disproving the derisive implication of what it meant to ‘ski like a girl.’”
Gu went on to express gratitude for the one season in which she did compete for the U.S.
“When I was 15, I announced my decision to compete for China. At the time, I had spent one season on the US team, and had been lucky enough to meet my heroes in person. I am forever grateful for that season, and continue to maintain a close relationship with the team. I had spent every summer in China since I was 8 setting up summer camps on trampoline and dry slope for kids and adults, ranging from 7 to 47 years old, so I knew the industry was tiny. I felt like I knew everyone,” she added.
“Skiing for Team China meant the opportunity to uplift others through the universal culture of sport, and to introduce freeskiing to hundreds of millions of people who had never heard of it, especially with the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics around the corner.”
Gu’s statement concluded by acknowledging that certain people “don’t understand” her decision to compete for China over the U.S., while insisting the choice maximized the impact she would have.
“I can look back now, at 22, and tell 12 year old Eileen that there are now terrain parks full of little girls, who will never doubt their place in the sport. I can tell 15 year old me that there are now millions of girls who have started skiing since then, in China and worldwide,” Gu wrote.
“A lot of people won’t understand or believe that I made a decision to create the greatest amount of positive impact on the world stage that I could, at this age, given my interests and passions. Three golds and six medals later, I can confidently say was once a dream is now a reality.”
Gu has become a target for global criticism this Olympics for her decision to represent China while remaining silent on the country’s alleged human rights abuses.
In an interview with Time magazine, Gu was asked her thoughts on China’s alleged persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
“I haven’t done the research. I don’t think it’s my business. I’m not going to make big claims on my social media,” Gu answered.
“I’m just more of a skeptic when it comes to data in general. … So, it’s not like I can read an article and be like, ‘Oh, well, this must be the truth.’ I need to have a ton of evidence. I need to maybe go to the place, maybe talk to 10 primary source people who are in a location and have experienced life there.
“Then I need to go see images. I need to listen to recordings. I need to think about how history affects it. Then I need to read books on how politics affects it. This is a lifelong search. It’s irresponsible to ask me to be the mouthpiece for any agenda.”
More controversy surrounding Gu erupted after The Wall Street Journal reported that Gu and another American-born athlete who now competes for China, were paid a combined $6.6 million by the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau in 2025.
Gu is the highest-paid Winter Olympics athlete in the world, making an estimated $23 million in 2025 alone due to partnerships with Chinese companies, including the Bank of China and western companies.
Her alignment with China prompted criticism from many Americans this Olympics, including Vice President J.D. Vance.
“I certainly think that someone who grew up in the United States of America who benefited from our education system, from the freedoms and liberties that makes this country a great place, I would hope they want to compete with the United States of America,” Vance said in an interview on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
Later, when Gu was asked if she feels “like a bit of a punching bag for a certain strand of American politics at the moment,” she said she does.
“I do,” she said. “So many athletes compete for a different country. … People only have a problem with me doing it because they kind of lump China into this monolithic entity, and they just hate China. So, it’s not really about what they think it’s about.
“And, also, because I win. Like, if I wasn’t doing well, I think that they probably wouldn’t care as much, and that’s OK for me. People are entitled to their opinions.”
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Silver medalist Eileen Gu of China attends the awarding ceremony of the freestyle skiing women’s freeski big air event at the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Livigno, Italy, Feb. 16, 2026. (Hongxiang/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Gu has claimed she was “physically assaulted” for the decision.
“The police were called. I’ve had death threats. I’ve had my dorm robbed,” Gu told The Athletic.
“I’ve gone through some things as a 22-year-old that I really think no one should ever have to endure, ever.”
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From Hollywood actors to Olympic athletes and politicians, California’s newest Hall of Fame class runs the gamut in talent and achievements.
Academy Award-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis and former governor/action star Arnold Schwarzenegger, Olympic champions Janet Evans and Carl Lewis, authors Riane Eisler and Terry McMillan, chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, groundbreaking ensemble Mariachi Reyne de Los Ángeles and former state Democratic leader John L. Burton all earned a spot into the assembly of distinct Californians, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday.
This class, the 19th in state history, will be formally enshrined during a ceremony at the California Museum in Sacramento on March 19 as a “celebration of their contributions to civic life, creativity, and social progress,” according to Newsom’s office.
The inductees “have reshaped our culture and our communities. Resilient and innovative, these leaders and luminaries represent the best of the California spirit,” Newsom said in a statement.
To be inducted, candidates must have lived in California for at least five years and “have made achievements benefiting the state, nation and world,” according to the California Hall of Fame website. To date, 166 Californians have been selected by three governors since 2006.
Schwarzenegger, 78, served as the state’s 38th governor and last Republican head of state from 2003 to 2011. His renaissance man biography includes a career as a body builder, highlighted by his Mr. Universe titles, action film success, political stardom and even tabloid-fodder infidelity.
Curtis, 67, a Santa Monica native, is among Hollywood’s elite and teamed with Schwarzenegger in the action blockbuster “True Lies” in 1994. Her acting career dates to 1977, and she earned a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in 2023 for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
Evans, 54, is a four-time Olympic gold medal swimmer and Fullerton native who attended Placentia El Dorado High School, Stanford University and USC. She serves as chief athletic officer for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.
Lewis, 64, is considered by many one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. The track star won 10 medals, nine of them gold, in four Olympics.
Eisler, 88, and McMillan, 74, added multiple bestsellers to this Hall of Fame class.
Eisler’s critically acclaimed “The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future” examines roughly 20,000 years of partnership between men and women and male domination over the last 5,000 years. The futurist, cultural historian and Holocaust survivor who has degrees in sociology and law from UCLA said she was informed of the honor last year by Jennifer Siebel Newsom and recently was honored by the Austrian government with its Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class.
“I am very honored at this time in my life to be inducted into the California Hall of Fame,” Eisler wrote in an email. “I have worked tirelessly to help create a better world, and firmly believe that a new paradigm, a new way of looking at our world and our place in it, is crucial.”
McMillan has written a series of smash hits, including a couple that became major studio films in the ‘90s, “Waiting to Exhale” and “How Stella Got her Groove Back,” centered on Black women’s voices.
Matsuhisa, 76, know for his iconic Japanese restaurant Nobu, which has six locations in California, owns businesses across five continents.
Mariachi Reyna de Los Ángeles, founded in South El Monte, rewrote the rules of music, becoming the first all-woman mariachi ensemble that has entertained for more than three decades.
Burton, the former chair of the California Democratic Party who died last year at 92, boasted a political career that included time in the California State Assembly and Senate and the U.S. House.
“This year’s class embodies the very best of California — creativity, resilience and a spirit of community,” Siebel Newsom said in a statement. “These honorees remind us that innovation and courage flourish when people are lifted up by those around them.”
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Ali Haji-Sheikh and Shar Pourdanesh share the fact they are retired NFL players living beyond the glow of the NFL spotlight. But they also share another distinction tying them to current events: They are part of the Iranian diaspora hoping for the downfall of the Islamic revolution.
They make up part of a small group of men who played in the NFL – along with David Bakhtiari, his brother Eric Bakhtiari and T.J. Housmandzadeh – who are decedents of Iranians.
Washington Redskins kicker Ali Haji-Sheikh (6) talks to reporters at Jack Murphy Stadium during media day prior to Super Bowl XXII against the Denver Broncos. San Diego, California, on Jan. 26, 1988.(Darr Beiser/USA TODAY Sports)
Haji-Sheikh: Self-Determination For Iranians
Haji-Sheikh, 65, played in the 1980s for the New York Giants, Atlanta Falcons and Washington Redskins. He was a first-team All-Pro, made the Pro Bowl and was on the NFL All-Rookie team in 1983 for the Giants and, in his final season, won a Super Bowl XXII ring playing for the Washington Redskins and kicking six extra points in a 42-10 blowout of the Denver Broncos.
Now, Haji-Sheikh is the general manager at a Michigan Porsche-Audi dealership and is like the rest of us: Keeping up with world events when time permits.
Except the war the United States is currently waging against the Islamic Republic of Iran is kind of different because Haji-Sheikh’s dad emigrated from Iran to the United States in the 1950s and built a life here.
And his son would like to see freedom come to a country he’s never visited but has a kinship to.
“It’s a world event,” Haji-Sheikh said on Monday. “I am not a big fan of the Islamic revolution because I am not Islamic. I would like to see the people of Iran be able to determine their own future rather than it be determined by a few people. It would be nice to see them having a stable government where the people can actually decide how they want it to go.
Green Bay Packers kicker Al Del Greco (10) talks with New York Giants kicker Ali Haji-Sheikh (6) on Sept. 15, 1985, at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers defeated the Giants 23-20.
Iranians Celebrating And Americans Protesting
Haji-Sheikh hasn’t taken to the streets of his native Michigan to celebrate a liberation that hasn’t fully manifested mere days after the American and Israeli bombing and elimination of the Ayatollah.
“I’m so far removed from that,” Haji-Sheikh said. “My mom is from Michigan and of Eastern European background. My dad is from Iran. But it’s like, he hasn’t been back since I was in eighth grade, so that’s a long time ago. That was when the Shah was still in power, mid-70s, ‘74 or ’75, because if he ever went back after that he never would have left. They would have held him, so there was no intention of going back.
“But if things change he might want to go, you never know.”
Despite being removed from any activism about what is happening in Iran Haji-Sheikh is an astute observer.
“My favorite thing I’m seeing right now on TV is the Iranians in America celebrating because there’s a chance, a glimpse, maybe a hope for freedom,” Haji-Sheikh said. “And you have these people in New York protesting. What are you protesting?”
Pourdanesh Thanks America, Israel
Pourdanesh retired from the NFL in 2000 after a seven-year career with the Redskins and Steelers. The six-foot-six and 312-pound offensive tackle was born in Tehran. He proudly tells people he was the NFL’s first Iranian-born player.
Pourdanesh is much more visible and open about his feelings about his country than others. And, bottom line, he loves that President Donald Trump is bombing the Islamic regime.
“This is a great day for all Iranians across the world,” Pourdanesh posted on his Instagram account on Saturday when the war began. “Thank you, President Trump, thank you to the nation of Israel. Thank you for everybody that has been standing up for my people, my brothers and sisters in Iran across the world. This is a great day.
“The infamous dictator is dead – the one person who has contributed to deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iranians and other people around the world, if not more. So, congratulations to my Iranian brothers and sisters. Now, go and take back the country.”
This message was not a one-off. Pourdanesh has been posting about what has been happening in Iran since January, when people in Iran took to the streets demanding liberty and the government’s thugs began killing them, with some estimates rising to 36,500 deaths.
Offensive lineman Shar Pourdanesh (68) of the Pittsburgh Steelers blocks against defensive lineman Jevon Kearse (90) of the Tennessee Titans during a game at Three Rivers Stadium on Sept. 24, 2000, in Pittsburgh. The Titans defeated the Steelers 23-20. (Photo by George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
‘Islam Does Not Represent The Iranian People’
“[The] Islamic Republic does not represent the Iranian people,” Pourdanesh said in another post. “Islam does not represent the Iranian people. For almost 50 years, the Iranian people and our country of Iran has been taken hostage by a terrorist regime, and it’s time to take that regime down.”
Pourdanesh was not available for comment on Monday. I did speak to a handful of other Iranian-Americans on Monday. They didn’t play in the NFL, but their opinions are no less valuable than those of former NFL players.
And these people, some of them participating in rallies on behalf of a free Iran, do not understand the thinking of some Americans and mainstream media.
One complained that media that reports on reparations for black Americans based on slavery in the 1800s dismisses the Islamic takeover of the American Embassy in 1979 as an old grievance.
Another said his brother lives in England, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer immediately called the American and Israeli attacks on the Ayatollah’s regime “illegal” but, as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service took years to do the same of Muslim rape (grooming) gangs in the country.
(Starmer announced a national “statutory inquiry” in June 2025).
Offensive lineman Shar Pourdanesh of the Washington Redskins looks on from the sideline during a game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Three Rivers Stadium on Sept. 7, 1997, in Pittsburgh. The Steelers defeated the Redskins 14-13. (Photo by George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
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Pourdanesh Calls Out NFL Silence
And finally, Pourdanesh put the NFL on blast. He said in yet another post that during his career, the NFL asked him to honor black history, asked him to stand for women’s rights, asked him to fight for equality for those who cannot defend themselves.
“I did everything they asked, and now I ask the NFL this: Where are you now? Why haven’t we heard a single word out of the NFL? NFL, Commissioner Roger Goodell, all the NFL teams out there, all the players who say they stand for social justice, where are you now?
“Why haven’t we heard a single word out of you with regard to the people who have been killed as of today? The very values you claim to espouse are being trampled right now. Why haven’t we heard a single word?”
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Pregnant migrant girls are being sent to a Texas shelter flagged as medically risky
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World6 days agoExclusive: DeepSeek withholds latest AI model from US chipmakers including Nvidia, sources say
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Florida3 days agoFlorida man rescued after being stuck in shoulder-deep mud for days
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