In a game that seemed to shout “I’m back!” from the rafters, Brittney Griner, the star center for the Phoenix Mercury, scored 27 points and grabbed 10 rebounds before a raucous Arizona crowd Saturday in what was the Mercury’s second regular-season game and its home opener against the Chicago Sky. Though her play was stellar in her team’s 75-69 loss, the crowd’s cheers and standing ovations for Griner had more to do with her dramatic return from a Russian penal colony where she had become the unwilling pawn of geopolitical giants.
In a game that seemed to shout “I’m back!,” Brittney Griner scored 27 points and grabbed 10 rebounds before a raucous Arizona crowd Saturday.
A week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport for possession of two vape cartridges. She was later sentenced to nine years and transferred to a horrific Mordovian prison colony. Almost 300 days later, Russia released Griner in exchange for the United States releasing Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, known as “The Merchant of Death.”
It was hard to imagine Griner surviving nine years in a freezing Russian penal colony as a famous Black, lesbian woman from America. A 2021 State Department report on Russian human rights abuses said, “Conditions in prisons and detention centers varied but were often harsh and life threatening.” Even so, her capture inspired neither national unity nor a universal resolve to see her freed. Instead, Griner became yet another red state vs. blue state culture war fight. And even though she notably stood for the playing of the national anthem before Saturday’s game, her conservative antagonists are still at it. Now they’re calling out her standing.
By my count, conservatives had three main responses to Griner’s capture, all of them which were also voiced by former President Donald Trump. There was the argument that because she carried vape cartridges into Russia, she deserved to be arrested, convicted…
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