Basketball star's shirt altered in social media photos
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on October 6, 2021 at 16:18
- 2 min read
- By Claire SAVAGE, AFP USA
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"Draymond Green with no chill," reads a Facebook post with a photo of the Golden State Warriors player wearing the T-shirt with the cartoon syringe shrugging, next to a speech bubble that says: "Fuck it, die then."
The September 28, 2021 post was shared more than 4,500 times and liked more than 30,000 times.
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More examples of the image are available on Facebook here and on Instagram here.
Amid the current NBA push for mandatory vaccination of players, Green refused to convince a teammate to get the shot, calling the decision to get vaccinated "personal." Unvaccinated players in certain markets -- notably San Francisco and New York -- will be forced to miss their team's home games because they fall foul of local laws requiring all home team staff to be vaccinated.
Syringe shirt
AFP Fact Check ran a reverse image search using Yandex, which revealed that the social media image predates the pandemic, and Green's shirt actually had a cupcake on it.
Sports reporter Rachel Nichols tweeted a picture of Green in the cupcake shirt on February 11, 2017 with the message: "Draymond Green in his new t-shirt."
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He wore it after a win against the Oklahoma City Thunder, whose fans taunted then-Golden State player Kevin Durant by wearing cupcake costumes, indicating Green's teammate was "soft."
Covid-19 first reached the United States in 2020, and vaccines against the disease were not widely available until 2021 -- years after the photo was first posted.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that Covid-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths are more prevalent among unvaccinated versus vaccinated people, and that shots against the disease are safe and effective.
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