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Maya Moore on the court. Mingo Nesmith
evening sitdown
Your evening longread: The top basketball player who left to help a jailed man find justice
It’s a coronavirus-free zone as we bring you an interesting longread each evening to take your mind off the news.
EVERY WEEK, WE bring you a round-up of the best longreads of the past seven days in Sitdown Sunday.
For the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing you an evening longread to enjoy which will help you to escape the news cycle.
We’ll be keeping an eye on new longreads and digging back into the archives for some classics.
Maya Moore was at the peak of her career in the WNBA when she decided to leave to help a jailed man – Jonathan Irons – find justice. Here’s the story of why and how.
(ESPN, approx 25 mins reading time)
Moore sits next to her mother, Kathryn, in the front pew, 6 feet from Irons, her eyes fixated on the profile of his face. Her godparents, Cheri and Reggie Williams, who have advocated for Irons for the past 15 years, sit behind them and next to Cheri’s parents. It was Cheri’s father, Hugh Flowers, who first formed a bond in the early 2000s with Irons while volunteering as the choir director at Jefferson City Correctional Center. Irons, who grew up without knowing his birth father, grew so close to Flowers that he came to see him as a father figure. Moore’s fourth-grade teacher, Joni Henderson, sits next to the Williams family. Even the judge, Daniel Green, is connected to Moore. He coached her kindergarten soccer team.
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