PHOENIX — Brittney Griner embarked on a four-day itinerary that would disrupt anyone’s circadian rhythm.
First came the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, where she donned a sharp black jumpsuit Saturday night. President Biden pointed to her in the audience and said, “Boy, I can hardly wait to see you back on the field.”
Soon she was speeding to catch a flight, landing in Phoenix at 4 a.m. to start WNBA training camp with Mercury. Then she headed back east, to New York, for her first Met Gala. She was dressed in a chic tan suit, and her wife, Cheryl Griner, was in a strapless white gown, both custom Calvin Klein fashions. They mingled with celebrities that night, but Britney needed to get back to Phoenix on Tuesday afternoon for more basketball, and was hoping she could take a nap.
The glittering events, time zone navigation, and overall spectacle were overwhelming, but they may have also come as a kind of relief for Brittney Griner, who spent nearly 10 months detained in Russia and returned to the US in December as a new symbol of hope. Caught up in a geopolitical confrontation between Washington and Moscow, Greiner has drawn attention not only to herself and the plight of other foreign detainees, but also to the financial disparities facing women in the sport she brought to Russia in the first place.
On Friday, Griner will return to the court for her first official WNBA match in 579 days. The league isn’t the same now, in part because of her. The cases she brought to light while in detention are not new and are unlikely to be easily resolved. But she has galvanized a solid fan base and a sporting workforce eager to welcome her home and use this moment to promote change on her side.
“We’ve wanted change for a long time, but now we’re starting to demand it,” Minnesota Lynx forward Navisa Collier said. “We’re getting a little impatient with that and realizing it’s an issue where we don’t have the money yet, but we’re pushing for it really, really soon we have the resources to treat it like athletes.”
Why was britney griner in russia
Russian customs officials detained Griner at an airport near Moscow in February 2022 after vape cartridges with cannabis oil were found in her bag while she was returning to play for UMMC Yekaterinburg, a professional team that paid her at least $1 million. She was convicted on drug charges and sentenced to nine years in a penal colony, but was released in a prisoner exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, in December. The US State Department said she was unjustly detained.
The WNBA, in its 27th season, has long seen dozens of its players travel abroad during each off-season in search of higher salaries, though the league is trying to offer them additional ways to make money in the United States. The WNBA salary cap is about $230,000, and it was half that just a few years ago. Great players like Griner, a seven-time All-Star center, can captain hundreds of thousands of international teams. Many people were unaware of this dynamic until Greener’s arrest and expressed their shock and frustration on social media and on television shows.
“As much as I’d like to pay my light bill for the love of the game, I just can’t,” Griner said last month during her first press conference since her release.
The Associated Press reported that 67 Of the 144 players in the league, they are still playing internationals in the off-season, demonstrating the attractiveness of the opportunity to generate extra income. But in light of Greiner’s arrest and the war in Ukraine, players have shunned the historically lucrative Russian organizations of teams in countries like Italy and Turkey. About 90 players played internationally five years ago.
Collier, 26, who has played for international teams in the NBA off-season, said younger players are gaining important experience abroad. But she said she doubts she will play abroad again after Griner’s experience and wants to spend more time with her daughter, who turns one on Thursday.
This is how household names are built.
WNBA officials have attributed the players’ modest salaries to historically modest—and possibly meager—revenues and media attention. Many WNBA players have become accustomed to entering the league with less media fanfare and sometimes playing in front of much smaller crowds than they did in college.
“I was part of it when I was in college and it was the most exciting ticket in the country,” said Mercury protégé Diana Taurasi, who starred at UConn before becoming the WNBA’s professional scorer. She continued, “How do we create the best ticket in the country for the world’s best basketball players in the WNBA? That, to me, only happens in women’s sports where teens get more attention than adults.”
Griner, who joined Mercury in 2013, has been a star since famously diving into Baylor. In her first press conference since her return, Griner pleaded with the unusual wave of reporters to come and cover games during the season as well.
“The league is a league that needs celebrities,” said Candy Lee, professor of journalism and integrated marketing communications at Northwestern. She added, “The league can take advantage of that. Mercury can take advantage of it.”
The increase in WNBA interest due to Griner has combined with broader momentum for women’s sports in recent years. Last month’s NCAA Division I women’s basketball championship game broke records with an average of 9.9 million viewers, according to ESPN.
WNBA teams will play a record 40 regular season games this year, and the league has signed a multi-year deal with Scripps to broadcast Friday night games on the ION Network. ESPN will broadcast the first two games of the regular season, Friday in Los Angeles and Sunday in Phoenix against Chicago. Viewership increased during the 2022 regular season 16 percent over the previous year, according to the league, making it the most watched season in 14 years.
Flip through the NBA playoffs and you’ll likely spot a WNBA player, like Candace Parker of the Las Vegas Aces or Ariki Ogunbwale of the Dallas Wings, featured prominently in a commercial. Puma recently announce The second signature shoe for Liberty’s Breanna Stewart. A spokesperson for Griner, who became the first openly gay athlete to sign with Nike in 2014, confirmed that he remains with the brand, but the company did not answer questions about whether it plans to market it this season.
A few weeks before Griner’s arrest, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced that the league had raised $75 million from investors which it planned to use for marketing and revamping the league’s business model.
Collegiate stars like Angel Reese of Louisiana State, Paige Bueckers of UConn, and Caitlin Clark of Iowa State are preparing to enter the league in the next few years, providing their dynamic games, name recognition, and national television exposure.
“That’s why we put so much marketing money behind some of our stars,” Engelbert said. She added, “This is how family names are built.”
Travel Talk
Concerns about Griner’s travel security since her detention have added to the fiery travel controversy in the WNBA
Unlike in the NBA or in many of the men’s and women’s top college teams, WNBA players fly on commercial airlines to games. It has always been a sore point for players who have had to sleep in airports or rush into matches due to delays. This year, it’s widely believed that Griner will need to travel privately, though Mercury and the WNBA have not disclosed her plans.
“I definitely want to make all of these trips private,” said Greiner. “That would be nice. Not just for me and my team, but for the whole league. We all deserve it. We work hard. We do a lot and it would be nice if we finally got to the point where we got to this point as well.”
The WNBA has said it cannot afford a tab of more than $20 million a season for charter flights, even though some owners may be willing to provide them with their own teams. Charter flights are prohibited in the collective bargaining agreement between the team owners and the players association as an unfair competitive advantage. The WNBA fined Liberty $500,000 for secretly using charter flights to fly to certain games during the 2021 season.
In April, the league announced that it would have charter flights for teams playing on consecutive days during the regular season and for all playoff games. The WNBA had made exceptions in similar situations previously.
“We’re going to work that out as we continue to build this model,” Engelbert said. “Because once you do it, you basically have to do it forever, so we want to make sure we don’t jeopardize the financial viability of the league.”
On Thursday, the WNBA Players Association announced a deal with Priority Pass to give players access to airport lounges, which can provide food, spa treatments, and sleeping accommodations. Los Angeles star striker Nika Ogomik and president of the Players Association said in a statement that she hopes other “partners” will see the deal as a “call to action.”
In a statement, Terry Jackson, the union’s executive director, called the deal “an important step in the right direction.”
It affects the world
Mercury president Vince Kozar described an ominous cloud over the franchise last season in every practice, media session, and game without Griner. Short videos shown to her in Russia showed her hands tied or locked in a cage. On the day Greiner was sentenced, the Mercury players got together and cried — and then had to play a game. “I carried that weight of uncertainty and fear,” Kozar said.
Finally, all of a sudden, we parted ways upon Griner’s release in December. Kozar didn’t expect Griner to immediately announce if she would play again in the WNBA but when she returned to the United States, she said she would.
Griner was perhaps the most connected player in the WNBA last season. Players from all over the league sent her letters, their only means of communicating with her. In letters with Kozar, Greiner was not asking so much about the organization and what was going on in it as about it.
“It was just a reminder that basketball was one of the things that was taken away from her, how it affects the world that is central to her identity, and that so many of her relationships are built around it,” Kozar said.
Griner will lead the league in hugs this season. She scribbled autographs and snapped selfies in the tunnel of a preseason game against the Sparks in Phoenix last week. This was her first job since her return. A humble crowd cheered louder than they seemed capable during Griner’s introductory introduction. Mercury trainer Vanessa Nygaard said shivers ran down her spine.
Outpacing everyone else on the court, Griner grabbed her first bucket on a quick turnaround a minute into the first quarter. Well, here we go, Greener thought to herself. A lot has seemed unfamiliar to her lately. Jet setup for a living? She laughed, “It’s not her.” But that first shot, I thought, felt great.