Ex-NBA player calls for chastity, obedience to God
By Michael Zennie
Mon, Jun. 12, 2006
At 6-foot-9, A.C. Green towered over his lectern and everyone else on the stage.
But for the audience, his message stood even higher.
Green, a retired Los Angeles Lakers player and NBA “Iron Man,” told graduates of three Fort Wayne schools Sunday that he owes his success – both on the basketball court and off – to personal discipline and obedience to God.
Green, 42, played on the L.A. Lakers 2000 championship team and holds the NBA Iron Man record for most consecutive games played – 1,192.
He gained acclaim for remaining a virgin until he married in 2002 – through 16 seasons in the NBA. In 1989, he established the A.C. Green Youth Foundation to promote sexual abstinence education, according to the foundation’s Web site.
Green told the crowd of about 300 at the commencement ceremony for Cornerstone Christian Bible College, the Cornerstone Christian Preparatory School and Chosen Christian Beauty and Barber College in the Johnny Appleseed Room of Memorial Coliseum that his accomplishments and skill in the NBA were God’s reward for his abstinence.
“Waiting for those 38 years – it was worth it,” he said.
Green focused on his decision to abstain from sex until he married his wife, Veronique, when he was 38.
Read more about it at Journal Gazette
|
