Brittney Griner on Coming Home

DAVID GREENE, HOST: Welcome to Sports in America, everybody. I’m David Greene, and I am here with our producer, Michaela Winberg, and Michaela, I think we should say, this is normally the part of the show where we might have a conversation with a sports journalist, maybe setting up the WNBA season, which is getting started. But I think we just decided, you know, there’ll be a lot of time to talk about the basketball in the season. The interview that we have on the show this week was, it just felt too important to take time away from, and it’s worth getting right into it. It’s with Brittney Griner.

MICHAELA WINBERG, PRODUCER: Yes, yeah, I absolutely agree working on this episode and listening to your conversation with her. It just felt like it deserved the full hour this time. She’s got an incredible story from her athletic background, of course, and then what happened to her a few years ago when she ended up in the prison system in Russia. And I was just curious how that landed for you specifically, because I know you did some reporting in Russia, right?

DG: Yeah, no, I moved my life there with my wife.

MW: Oh my gosh.

DG: This was pre-Morning Edition hosting days. I was the, the bureau chief for NPR in Moscow. And yeah, I think hearing about Brittney Griner’s detention after going through Sheremetyevo Airport, and them finding something in her bag that was illegal. It hit home for me because I, like, I don’t want to say that being a journalist in Russia is always dangerous. I mean, Russian journalists actually are the ones who are truly at risk, but being an expat journalist, you know, we felt this sense of safety, but we were often, I would say, followed by Russian security agents. And, you know, I flew through Sheremetyevo Airport, the airport where Brittney was detained a ton of times. And, you know, when I would get extra questions, I would immediately freeze up and just feel like, “What could happen?” I could lose my freedom at any moment because that’s the kind of society that we live in. And I don’t know, her story is just extraordinary. I know she’s getting started with the Connecticut Sun, a new WNBA team this year, which is awesome, but she’s always gonna live with those painful memories of what happened to her in Russia. But I guess I wonder, I mean, you, as you said, listened through this interview, and I know you’re a sports fan and a journalist like I am. I mean, how does her story land with you?

MW: Well, my dad was a huge women’s basketball fan. And so I just knew her as this huge star. And I don’t know, I feel like sometimes we can think that people like that are unstoppable or unbeatable because they are on the court. And it’s just really crazy too, in making this episode, to see how different the justice system is. I think we see a lot of problems with the justice in the United States, but in Russia, it’s a completely different conversation. And to see how somebody, even who’s an American citizen, can get wrapped up in that, it’s so scary, really, and so jarring to see how it affected her and her whole family.

DG: Yeah, well, let’s hear her story. I think we should start in February 2022.

BG: You know that feeling, like when you get scared, and like it feels like everything just drops out of your stomach and your chest and everything, like that feeling.

[MUSIC]

DG: She was making her way through that security checkpoint at Sheremetyevo International Airport. She was actually on her way to play basketball for a team in Russia. This is a journey that, you know, she said she had made many times before. This was her seventh season playing basketball overseas with the team. But this time was going to be different in so many ways. An airport security agent stopped her, directed her to search through her own bag, and that was something she had never been asked to do before. So, she knew something was up. She felt around the bottom of her duffel bag, and she pulled out sweatpants and toiletries, and she was showing it all to the agent.

BG: I’m literally grabbing things like you didn’t check this. Look at this.

DG: So in a side pocket, she’s feeling around, and she finds something that she actually didn’t remember packing. It’s a vape cartridge, and it contained less than one gram of THC oil.

BG: As soon as I saw it, I was just like, oh my god.

DG: Brittney’s heart just sank. She realized she must have forgotten to take it out of her bag before she had packed for this trip to Russia.

BG: Cause when the guy grabs it and looks at it, immediately starts calling over like all these people, like the look he has, I’m just like, “Oh, this is like, you found the pot of gold right now.”

DG: That’s because while THC was medically prescribed to her in the United States, it was illegal in any quantity in Russia.

BG: So I’m panicking. I start texting my wife, like, “Hey, wake up.” Normally, she’s asleep right now, because normally, like, I don’t call until I get to the other side. Trying to wake her up, I text my agent, call her, and I’m just like, “Hey, they found these cartridges in my bag.” I’m like… help. Oh, I mean, at that point I’m like, going, like, I’m done, like, it’s over, like there’s no way that this isn’t going to be a big deal.

DG: So it’s been four years since this incident, which led to charges of possession and smuggling of illegal drugs, a trial under the Russian criminal code, and also a harsh sentence at one of Russia’s most notorious prisons.

BG: It’s hard for me, honestly, talking on this, just because of the threats. Like, people don’t understand. People make mistakes, and it’s like, people can’t even open up their hearts to understand something.

DG: So a lot has changed in her life since then. She came home, she wrote a book about her experiences. She and her wife, Cherelle, became parents, and Brittney Griner left her original WNBA team, the Phoenix Mercury, to play in Atlanta and now Connecticut. But she said the experience of being locked up in Russia, unsure when, if ever, she might make it home, that stays with her.

BG: It’s a different normal, everything’s different. How we move, how we do things are all different now.

DG: That’s what we’re hearing about today. Brittney Griner telling her story from joining the WNBA as a first-round draft pick to being locked away in that Russian penal colony and then finally coming home. So first, let’s start at the beginning of Brittney Griner’s story. From a young age, Brittney Griner, actually, she told me she likes to go by BG, so we’ll go with that. She could feel that she was different from other kids.

I would love it if we could kind of start from the beginning, a little bit. I’d love to hear a little about growing up in Houston and about your family and some of your earliest memories.

BG: Yeah, so, born and raised Houston, Texas. Me and my dad, my mom, my sister, two sisters, one brother, but grew up pretty traditional household. I would say. Or old school, as some people would call it now, I guess. Pops went to work; he was a cop, law enforcement. He was in Vietnam before that, 68′, 69′, Marines. Got out and went into law enforcement his whole life. Mom had the hardest job taking care of me and my siblings at home. Especially me, cause I put her through the wringer. I was all over the place.

DG: In what way?

BG: I was, I don’t know if you ever watched, like Wild Thornberrys, but I was kind of like Donnie. Like I was just all over the place, like on top of the house, like climbing trees, falling out of trees, digging up holes, all in the backyard.

DG: She’s just chasing you around?

BG: Yeah. My mom was chasing me everywhere. I was like, “Hey, come watch this. I’m going to try to ride my bike out the back of Dad’s pickup truck.” You know, like (Laughs).

DG: (Laughs) Like off the bed of the truck, like onto the pavement?

BG: Literally, so I put her through a lot, but yeah, growing up, I was a little different, too. I went through some bullying early age, probably wasn’t the best. It definitely shaped my childhood a little bit, with just dealing with that, just feeling awkward a little bit, feeling out of place, looking different

DG: What was the awkward feeling, and how bad was the bullying that you faced?

BG: So I vividly remember girls coming up to me, touching my chest, and saying like, “Look, see, she isn’t a girl, she doesn’t have a chest.” And I’m just kind of like sitting there like, okay, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do with that, but feeling weird, feeling cast out, definitely kind of made me feel like I was isolated a little bit. Always was taller, always was bigger than everybody. Voice a little bit deeper, so wasn’t girly. I was your tomboy, like I said, climbing trees, digging holes with the dogs, all that type of stuff. So I just felt alone. Like I would journal a lot and write. I would destroy it because I didn’t want somebody to read it. And then, like I have to talk about that with my fam. So I was just kind of like took everything in like on my own, like, I just kind of like put it all in my head.

DG: I wonder what role basketball played for you. You know, just listening to you talk about, you know, kind of just being bullied and feeling awkward and feeling physically different and feeling really taller than everyone else. What did the sport mean to you when you were young?

BG: It meant everything because I feel like that’s when my life changed. Once I started playing basketball, being different in the way that I was different was celebrated. I’m tall. I’m bigger than everybody. The way I played, with my ingression that I played with, that was all celebrated on the court, and it helped me a lot. So basketball played a big role. I went from feeling like I was nobody, kind of like, you know, isolated, to now, I’m like that cool kid, which was nice. Like, I’m not going to lie. Like I was, especially as a young kid, like that was, it was a nice feeling to feel that, and basketball gave me that. So I leaned into basketball more, and just all around, like at every stage, like basketball has helped me in my life.

DG: There’s a shocking story, especially given what you’ve been through since then. I think there was a day we got into trouble. You got in trouble at school, and your dad was so angry. He made a homemade prison in your bedroom.

BG: Yeah.

DG: Like he took out all the furniture, and put you on strict meal plans.

BG: Yeah, everything, picked out my clothes, like I’ll never forget. Like, oh my God, I, my dad was like, “You know, this is what happens. You know, if you wanna act,” like, he was really hardcore. So he was like, “You want to act like a prisoner and not follow the rules. You know I’m gonna teach you.” And I’m like, okay. I guess I learned because that was hard. Like what? Literally stripped everything out of my room, everything. Toys, clothes, he gave me what I needed to wear to school. I came home, and I went in there, like I had to ask permission to go to the bathroom. Like, it was very like strict. It was very much a cop response to a kid just talking in class and just kinda being a class clown with the friends and stuff.

DG: Did he empathize with some of the hardships that you were facing and the bullying?

BG: My dad didn’t know about any of it, honestly, until I had wrote my first book. Honestly, they never knew anything. Like, I didn’t tell them.

DG: Years later?

BG: Like I’m an adult at this point when they found out about like everything I was dealing with, like me struggling with my sexuality, like the self-harm that I had kind of did to myself, like the suicidal thoughts that I had.

DG: I mean, I can’t even imagine how the memory of the homemade prison in your bedroom sort of lands in your mind now after everything you went through.

BG: I will say this. My dad got me ready for life. He didn’t know what was going to happen in my life, like him sharing stories. Because I mean, when he started off in law enforcement, he started off working at the prison in Texas, riding a horse. He would tell me the stories. I was the kid that he would tell everything to. There was no sugar coating, which I appreciate. He got me for life, and he would tell me stories about the inmates, and you know how they had the, you know, you get respect by giving it, and trust is given by showing that you can be trusted. These are little things that I didn’t know one day I would need to remember, or I’m glad he spoke these things into me. So I just knew how to conduct myself, which I think inevitably helped me in the long run with different things along the way, not just the prison in Russia, but just along through life. His harsh, hard lessons definitely helped me.

DG: That tough love from her dad really helped BG when it came to basketball. She became a force on the court really early in her career. She played for Baylor University and led the team to an undefeated 40-0 NCAA championship season in 2012. She racked up numerous Player of the Year awards, and she set the all-time NCAA record for blocked shots. She was on fire when she entered the WNBA draft in 2013.

ANNOUNCER: With the first pick in the 2013 WNBA draft, the Phoenix Mercury select Brittney Griner from Baylor University.

DG: What did it mean to be drafted in the first round by Phoenix? Take me back to that moment if you can.

[MUSIC]

BG: Oh, that was a dope moment. Me and my dad, my godfather, we were all there. I remember my dad being kind of choked up. He was a man that didn’t show a lot of emotion. So when I got drafted, I remember his eyes getting all watery and him being all choked up, which was a really special moment for me and him. It’s funny, I just watched the video. Me and wife was just watching old stuff and I saw the video, and I didn’t remember one of the interviews that I had did. Like, I literally couldn’t say anything. I was just so choked up. I was trying to speak all soft and everything. I was like, oh my god, I was such a little baby deer in headlights.

JOURNALIST: So, Brittney, people have thought for a long time that you would be the number one pick, but what was it like to finally hear your name called here tonight?

BRITTNEY GRINER FROM INTERVIEW: I’m lost for words, it was… like when I met Tony Hawk just a minute ago, I couldn’t say anything.

BG: That’s literally what I felt like that whole time; it was unreal. Like I never thought my life would be that, that I’d be drafted number one. And for Phoenix to take me number one, one I had never been to Phoenix, never been in Arizona. So I was pretty stoked to go out there and see something different besides Texas. ‘Cause that’s all I really had been around, you know, just Texas, Louisiana, down in the South. So it was nice to kind of get out, but it was icing on the cake. Something that I was able to achieve. You know, I guess I always kind of doubted myself growing up, just probably because of the bullying and not fitting in and feeling like maybe this might be, you know, this is gonna be taken away, or this might not really be real, but that made it so real to me.

DG: More from Brittney Griner coming up next here on Sports in America.

Welcome back to Sports in America, and here’s more from our conversation with Brittney Griner.

Being a college hoops star earned BG a spot on the Mercury, and yet there were still inequities. Back when she was first drafted, there was a massive gender pay gap in basketball. This has at least partially been addressed—in fact, just this year, the WNBA reached a new collective bargaining agreement that will pay athletes a lot more. But in 2013, while the minimum salary in the NBA was $500,000, the WNBA maintained a maximum salary of just $107,000 per year. Yeah, those numbers are right. So in order to bridge the big pay gap, BG embraced other playing opportunities overseas— where they treated her and paid her like an actual star.

So you, like many other players, had to split your time between playing for the WNBA and then playing in another professional league abroad. That’s what took you to Russia and playing for a team in the city of Yekaterinburg. I just wondered, talk to us about why that was the reality, that you had to find that extra work on the off-season.

BG: Yeah, I mean, the pay gap between us and the guys is pretty astonishing, but to make up that gap, I was able to go overseas. My first two years, I actually went to China. My first 2 years went to Hangzhou and then Beijing my second year, and then I got the opportunity to go to Ekat and play for UMMC, which was literally the top team at the time, flying private jets, staying in the best hotels. They literally treated you, you know, what you were worth. And we were professional athlete and we got treated like a professional athlete. There was no woman professional athlete, like it was just, you’re a professional athlete, so that’s how we’re gonna treat you. And it was nice to be able to have that, to be able to, you know, make funds, to be able to help my family. be able to put up funds for my family for future planning because I knew we were going to have kids one day. So this was it was able to help us with that, and then just playing at the top level. It was amazing, so we just kept going back, and that’s what we had to do. Which ends up making us play year-round. I would go from, I would get done with the W, you know, if you were lucky enough to make it to you know the championship, to the finals, you basically play all the way up until your overseas team is already playing. Like they went through training camp, they’re already playing, so when you get done in your contract, you had like, you know, 14, around 14 days to get over there. Some people, as soon as you got done, you have to go. So you’re right back into another season that goes all the way into our training camp for the WNBA.

DG: There’s no off-season for you.

BG: No off-season, don’t let it be Olympic year, and you know, you have that honor to be able to go represent your country because you’re literally not getting a day off at that point. Like you’re playing the whole year.

DG: BG was getting used to the grind. She joined the WNBA in 2013. And in addition to competing in two Olympics and winning gold, by the way, she started filling her off-seasons with international basketball. Come 2022, she was in her seventh year playing in Russia, and she was exhausted.

[MUSIC]

So the, the morning you’re getting ready to go back to, to fly to Russia, to fly, to Moscow and then on, on to Yekaterinburg. Take me through that morning because it sounds like you were having some weird feelings already about this return to Russia.

BG: Yeah, that morning was pretty tough. It was just so many signs. It’s like the universe was like saying, you know, listen to your mind. Don’t go back. I just…

DG: It’s crazy the universe does that, but it’s like, I don’t understand it, but I think we can all agree. Like, there’s just….

BG: It’s crazy. One thing I said from this experience like if I ever have a feeling or I feel like the universe is telling me something, I’m gonna always listen. I don’t care what the consequences are. I’m going to listen. But that morning, I lost my keys, couldn’t find my keys. I am always the person that’s early. Like, if I got to be somewhere by seven, I am probably going to be already getting there around like 5.45, close to six. That way I have so much time in case of traffic or whatever, so. , running late, lost my keys, couldn’t find my keys. Couldn’t find phone, finally find everything. You know, we’re throwing my stuff in my bags, cause I waited till the last minute to pack as well. Normally, my wife packs for me, but it was also Valentine’s Day, so I was like, “I got this.” My version of I got this, was not hers…

DG: (Laughs) Maybe you don’t really have it, but you’re going to tell her that you got this.

BG: No. “Oh, babe, I got it.” Throws everything in, “Look, everything’s good. I got it.” So I’m doing that. We rushed to the airport, she drops me off. I leave. I see that I have the keys to my car. So if she cuts the car off, she’s gonna be stuck.

DG: Oh no.

BG: So I call her real quick. I’m like, “Hey, do not turn the car off. Turn around, come back.” I can’t make it back out to her because if I go back out, I’m not making it back through TSA. It already took me forever to get through. So I find a worker, and I hate doing this, but I pulled the like,” Do you know who I am?” (Laughs) I feel so bad saying it.

DG: Once in a while, you have to do that, like when it really

BG: I felt so bad because I hate that, it cringes me, but I’m just like, “Do you know who I am?” And he’s like, “Yeah, of course.” I’m like, “I really need you to take these keys to my wife. I’ll give you all the money in my wallet right now.” I probably had like $200 some in my wallet. I literally just gave him all the money. I was just like, “Please take these keys to my wife.” So he does that. I run to the gate, get on the gate to get out. So much is happening. This is also around the time where you have to have the COVID test within a certain amount of time to fly out.

DG: Right, I remember those days.

BG: I was off by two minutes.

DG: Are you kidding me? And they stopped you?

BG: Yes, like I had to go take another test. I ended up having to switch my flight. Like it was just so much I had to do, I was at the Aeroflot, which is the airline going over to Russia. Like I’m trying to talk with them. Just like, it’s two minutes. Like, the two minutes went by because I was in this line with y’all. Like that, it was absolutely not. No working, no nothing. So it was so many little things that was going on. On top of, I didn’t want to go back already anyway, because I wanted to be done. Like I was tired of leaving my family, but as my dad would say, “You finish what you start, you don’t give up.” And I couldn’t give it up on my team. We were at the most crucial part of our season. Like we were in playoffs. We were going to win Russian League, we were going win Euro League again. So it was just so much going on, and I made a mistake.

[MUSIC]

DG: So the mistake, you landed at the airport in Moscow, and your bags are getting searched. And talk me through how these cartridges are discovered.

BG: We’re going through TSA, and I’m going through to check like the switch through, basically, to get to the domestic side to go through. I made it through the first checkpoint already. And it was kind of weird because I’ve been through this airport so many times and….

DG: It’s the Sheremetyevo, is that the one that you’re on?

BG: Yes, the Sheremetyevo.

DG: That’s where Aeroflot, yeah. I’ve taken that flight many times.

BG: Oh, god, yes. So you understand the…

DG: Yeah. It feels very Soviet, like no one’s smiling at you, no one is…

BG: Nothing. Well, this day, every worker was working. I had never seen it like this before. Like literally, I’m not trying to throw shade, but I’ve never seen them care this much in their life, like ever. So I get to the part where it’s like the two scanners, and you can walk through, like some people are just walking through. Most people are walking through, most Russians are just walking through, and they’re pulling the Europeans, they’re pulling the American, people that look American. And I get told, “Hey, no, come on. Go through.” I’m like, okay. You see on the video, I walk up, throw my stuff up there. Walk through. They tell me, “Hey, we gotta,” pointing at the bag. “Gotta check it.” Put it up there, zip open everything. I’m helping them go through it, which is already weird because TSA in the States, you know…

DG: Yeah, they yell at you. They make you keep your hands off.

BG: What? You can’t touch anything, like what are you doing? Like my hand i’m literally grabbing things like you didn’t check this, look at this, and side of the bag cartridge, and I was just like, as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh my god

DG: And to be clear, these were cartridges that had cannabis that was medically approved, that you had a doctor actually prescribe to you legally at home for the pain that you would go through playing nonstop basketball?

BG: Yes. Medical, gray marijuana, yes.

DG: But illegal in Russia?

BG: Illegal in Russia and not full, these were empty cartridges. Like they, it was very little amount in it that they scraped out of there.

DG: Oh, they were empty? They just had the remnants of what you had in there.

BG: Yes, they were not full cartridges, like, they were not.

DG: That’s incredible. But you still thought this was, this was going to be really, really bad.

BG: Yeah, I knew this was, I just felt like this was gonna be so bad.

DG: Like BG predicted, her situation got bad really fast. First, she was brought to a detention center where she spent almost all of her time alone.

It sounds like your first, the first detention center was, I mean, it sounds to me like it was almost like solitary confinement.

BG: It definitely was. So the detention center that I got took to, finally. I mean, after they transported me to some random building on the side of the airport and had military guards guarding me in the long day, the next day, driving me all around the city to all these different hospitals and all these places to, I guess, “book me in.” Once I got to the detention center that I was at, yeah, they put me in a cell by myself for, It’s over a week. You aren’t supposed to be in there over a week either. Like I found out from the girls later, much later on, but they left me in there over a week. It was, I had nothing, literally nothing. My lawyer had to find me. That was his last words. He would find where they take me. They don’t, he didn’t know, which was so unsettling, knowing that I’m in a foreign country. I’m being detained. My lawyer doesn’t know where I am. My family doesn’t know where I’m. Only the people that don’t, that I don’t even speak their language, they know where I’m going, but I can’t even ask. Can’t even ask the girls or the ladies once I get there, “Hey, where am I?” It’s not that I couldn’t even talk to them. But I was in solitary, had a shirt, I had two extra shirts, so I took a shirt, ripped it up. I used that as like to clean myself and toilet paper because I had literally, when I say I had nothing, I had the clothes on my back and two extra shirts. That’s it.

DG: I can’t even imagine the loneliness. I mean, and also especially hearing you talk about kind of your childhood and a lot of feelings of loneliness, like no one is there for you. I mean, it sounds like this was just another, yet another version of that kind of thing.

BG: Yet another version of being alone all by yourself, and even worse, because it’s just like the filth, the dirt, you don’t fit. Like, I just don’t even fit in there, like the bed, I don’t fit. It’s bugs and spiders crawling all over where your head is supposed to be laying down. It’s blood on the sheets, it’s stains on the sheet but you don’t even know what they are.

DG: BG spent nearly five months locked up before her trial finally got started. A lot was on the line. Her charges, they carried a sentence of up to 10 years in a Russian penal colony, a remote prison that used inmates for forced labor.

[MUSIC]

So the image of you the day of the verdict, I mean, it’s just heartbreaking. I mean, they put a cage in the courtroom in Russia. It looked like, because of your height, I mean, it was very awkward for you to even communicate.

BG: Had to hunch down so I could hear, so I could see the judge, cause at the top it was kind of solid. So we asked if I could, at least on the day where I had to testify, like, and say my last, you know, little words or whatever, we asked, if I could like come out, you know, still handcuffed, still all the guards in there, the dogs, everything’s in there. But no, for security reasons, I couldn’t do it. I guess I was too much of a risk. You know, she was saying it, they was reading it off so quick. And when she said the nine, I pretty much knew she said nine when she said it in Russian before the translator translated it for me.

DG: It’s like the devyat, right?

BG: Mhm, devyat, yup.

DG: So you were listening for that.

BG: Oh yeah, I was listening for the numbers. Like, I don’t know a lot, but I know numbers. I was waiting on that. I honestly thought they were gonna give me 10. Me and my cellmates we had bets. But I hear it, and I’m just like, wow, nine years. The lady that washes our clothes in the detention center, who killed her second husband, only got seven, but okay.

DG: Oh my god.

BG: First husband, she got six years. Second husband, she got seven years. I’m like, okay. I’m just like, well, now the real work begins, I guess, cause I knew, like I knew going into it, like, nothing, if anything was gonna happen, a trade or anything, like I had to be sentenced. I did know that.

DG: On top of the staggeringly harsh sentence, BG found herself wrapped up in the strange dynamics of politics and also celebrity. Even the prosecutor, that’s the person who was responsible for proving that BG was guilty of her crime, he asked BG for a photo with her after the trial was wrapping up, and he specifically asked her not to smile.

BG: Twice the photos, because I smiled in the first one. They came back and got me in the back when they were taking me down when I was getting prosecuted, like my nine years. Took me out to the back and was like, “Don’t smile on this one.” I smiled again.

DG: The prosecutor wanted you to look miserable, like didn’t want you to…

BG: Yes, yes. And when he asked me for the photo, I was looking miserable. When they went to take the photo, I smiled. I said, “What? No, I’m gonna mess up the photo. I’m going to smile. I’m not going to sit here and give you what y’all thought you were going to get.”

DG: When the trial was finished, it was time for BG to move on to her next destination, a remote Russian penal colony known worldwide for its incredibly harsh conditions.

And then you get transferred to IK-2, which is one of the most notorious labor camps in Russia, right?

BG: The transfer to the IK-2 was crazy. They come and get you in the middle of the night out your cell in the detention center, dogs barking, going crazy. They wake you up, snatch you out of there. Then you sit in a room for hours. Like you’re not even finna leave right then. They just come snatch you off the cell and put you in a room. Guards come, they take you, put you on this small truck, get transported to the train station, get on the train. It’s regular trains in the front. Like, there’s regular free people right there. They back the truck up to the last car, and then you jump the gap, and then you get on the train. And then the women’s cell is at the very end, and that’s where you just start stacking in. And the train goes back, pick up people, goes forward, picks up people, goes back, picks up people. And we finally get to wherever we are. At this point, I have no idea which direction we are now. Like we went back and forward so many times. Rainin’, you got your bags, they got the guys in the front, chained us all together. They got the guns pointed right at you. And then they started yelling at us to start walking. And then we walked to where all these trucks, police trucks are. And then everybody gets in their trucks, and then they start the road to the prison.

DG: I have so many questions to ask, but the story that you’ve talked about that stands out to me. I mean, your dreads were so famous as a player in the WNBA, like it was your brand, and there were young girls who just would follow you. And it was so cold in that prison camp that you had to lose them to cut them off?

BG: Had to cut them all off. So worst thing you can do is get sick there. Like, literally the worst thing to do. There’s no quarantine of people being sick with TB and all of that. Like they’ll just throw you all in there. So when they do the morning checks and the night checks, you have to stand outside. We all stand in lines. And then they come by with their little clipboard and literally check off each person. It’s not; you would have thought it would have been a little bit more advanced. Like being able to check us. No, it’s old school, paper, pen, clipboard, checking us off, double checking cause the numbers aren’t right. And we’re just standing there. Snow is literally building up on my head and on my shoulders. You have to like knock it off. And my dreads would freeze after I washed them, like to try to keep them clean. I couldn’t believe it, literally like frozen, like stiff. So I was like, there’s no way. So I had to ask the security guard, who we call Mother of Dragons, because she breathed fire. Like she was hardcore. So we had somebody ask her if I could cut my dreads. They said I could them a little bit because of the security reasons, because I had took photos already. That if I cut them too much, they wouldn’t be able to recognize me. So you can’t tell the one American in all this whole prison, you can tell the one Black American that’s 6’8″? If I have short hair, if I have long hair? Okay. We cut it off anyway. I mean, what’s she gonna do? Glue it back on? So we just cut it off.

DG: The most painful part of this for BG wasn’t the frozen dreads. It wasn’t the possibility of contracting TB or the physical feat of squeezing her body into that cell that was way too small for her frame. It was actually writing one specific letter to her wife across the globe. She was back home in Phoenix.

Is it true that you told your wife that if she needed to move on, you know, to another relationship or something, you know, that you didn’t expect her to stick around with you if you were going to be there for, for like a decade?

[MUSIC]

BG: I did. This was in the letter. I was still at the detention center when I wrote this one. It was a hard letter to write. It’s just like, I think that’s a long time. It’s already a long for somebody to do in the States, where you can go and visit them, you know, occasionally and stuff like that. Like, could never visit me. We never see each other. I knew, like, I know her plans. I know what we planned. We planned to have a family. I know having a family was big for her, big for me as well. We come from big families. None of that was gonna happen. Like it just wasn’t gonna happen, 10 years? Like nine years, well, nine years. But who’s to say I get out on time? The war was going on. Like, anything could happen, you know? That’s a long time to make somebody wait, and just getting older and older. I’m just thinking about all this, like the time, like when I got out, will we even be able to have kids? And like with the age and everything, like, it was just so much. And I just wanted her to just promise me one thing, just, you know, still be my friend, still write me, still, you know, stay in touch so I can have somebody. But yeah, that was a hard letter to write. I was tore up in the cell, like pretty bad, but of course she wrote me back, like, “Of course not.” Like she wasn’t doing that, so.

DG: And what that mean to you?

BG: Meant everything, like you know, like I still. It’s like I believed it, but then there was just thoughts in the back of my head. It’s just like, “She’s probably just saying that so I don’t like lose it,” but, oh, there’s my little man going.

DG: Bash?

BG: Yeah, that’s Bash. It’s getting time for nap time. Sorry about that.

DG: No, no worries.

BG: But you just see other women and you hear people, you know, getting the letter of, “Oh, her husband broke up with them,” or “Hey, their husband took the kids and left,” or “They had been together, he was doing it for this long, and now he’s gone,” or “He’s remarried,” or “He’s cheating on her.” And you see how devastating it is, and how it just breaks some prisoners. Like, literally can break you. So I was trying to avoid some of that.

DG: We’ll be right back with Brittney Griner here on Sports in America.

This is Sports in America, and let’s hear more now from our conversation with Brittney Griner.

So while BG was enduring all of this trauma, being locked away in a Russian penal colony, U.S. diplomats were fighting for her release, largely in the background. In December of 2022, 10 months after she was first incarcerated, the deal came through, and she was finally able to go home.

So you ultimately, you get out after nearly a year in detention. You’re in a prisoner exchange that was brokered by the U.S. government. Exchanged for Viktor Bout, who was a long-time arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death” around the world. There’s some people who have said like that, you know, it wasn’t worth, like that was an unfair deal. You know that you made this mistake coming into an airport, and to free a violent arms dealer, you know that that wasn’t the right kind of deal. Like, what’s your message to people who have doubts about that?

BG: You know, it was wild coming back, hearing some of the things that I heard coming back. A lot went into this deal, a lot of scenarios, a lot of things happened. I know one thing that, first thing I did when I got on that plane, I was like, “Is it just me or is it me and Paul?” And that was my first…

DG: Paul Whelan, the other American in Russian detention, yeah.

BG: My first thing that I wanted to know, because the whole time we were trying to do a deal, we wanted both of us to come home. But, you know, I’ve learned with basketball and doing things in life, people are always going have their own opinions on things. People are always gonna make opinions off of headlines, make opinions off of not knowing all the facts, not trusting that the people that made this deal, the very smart people that do this and make these type of deals, took everything into consideration and realized that this was a good deal. And that this deal could potentially help with the relations to get more of our people that are over there back home as well. So in the long run, I think it was a good deal because we all are home now from there. But, you know, when other people came home, I didn’t see these types of remarks and things. And it’s crazy how divided we are, especially right now in America. And I just think we just need to look at, we’re all American. At the end of the day, that flag represents every single one of us, and I’m proud to have that flag just like every single, everybody else. So yeah, that’s what I got to say on it.

DG: You had this really powerful phrase in your book, “That a freedom campaign has a question at its heart, who deserves our sympathy?” Say more about that.

BG: I just —It’s hard for me, honestly, talking on this, just because of the threats. Like, people don’t understand. People make mistakes, and it’s like, people can’t even open up their hearts to understand something. Like, I literally had death threats. My wife had death threats, had threats on my family, my son, all behind making a mistake, and all behind coming back. They act like I made, like I chose whoever it was. We offered, there was just so much that was on the table. People just don’t understand. And it is just, it is killing me, honestly. Like, I try not to read the comments, I try not to look at them, because it’s like people telling me I need to kill myself, I need to go back, I’m un-American, like.

DG: I’m so sorry.

BG: Like, I need to be careful, like, they’re, I need a watch over my back and things like that. Like, it’s….yeah.

DG: We live in a terrible, toxic country in many ways right now.

BG: Very much so. People have so many opinions, and they just, so many opinions. They need to look with their hearts.

DG: In many ways, BG is still healing from all the trauma, that loss of freedom. I mean, when has anyone ever done healing from all of that? It does help, though, that she’s gotten a brand new sense of purpose. She and Cherelle welcomed their son, Bash, into the world in July of 2024. She wrote a memoir about her time in Russia. It’s called “Coming Home,” and after Bash was born, she adapted it for a young adult audience, in hopes that he’ll read it one day and learn about what she went through.

So you’re a parent now.

BG: I am.

DG: You mentioned your little one, Bash, running around. How has he changed how you reflect on everything you went through in Russia?

BG: I mean, I didn’t even think I would have him with the way my life was looking at the time. He means so much to me. It’s just a different side of me now that comes out, softer side of me that comes out. I know with all this, that everything that I went through, I hope, you know, when he sees this and looks back and, you know, reads the young adaptation at first. I hope he can see you can make it through anything. You can come out on the other side with your head held high. You can make a mistake and come back from it. It’s not about the mistake itself, but it’s how you carry yourself afterwards and how you hold yourself accountable and do the right things. I hope that a lot of people, a lot young adults can take this story, mine is real complex and extreme, but you can use it on anything to get through, you know, the things that I leaned on to get through my family, my faith, trusting the loved ones around me. Being strong.

DG: And how are you and your wife doing just in life in general? I mean, it really stood out to me that, “when you come home,” you wrote, “there’s no real normal.”

BG: No, it’s not. It’s a different normal. Everything’s different. How we move, how we do things are all different now. We gotta think about where we’re going. But we’re doing good though. Just had to relearn a lot of different things. I’ve changed, she’s changed. It’s been a process of just learning that. But we’re doing good. That’s my best friend. That’s literally my best friends. We’ve been through so much. She’s been through many stages of my life. Tough ones in college, to tough ones in my adulthood. Like, I really lean on her hard.

DG: That’s a beautiful thing. She sounds amazing. I’d love to meet her sometime.

BG: Yeah, nah, she’s awesome. She putting, she putting Bash down right now. I would have caught her in here.

[MUSIC]

DG: I’ll just finish by asking sort of what you want to leave people with. I mean, BG, you have an extraordinary story of resilience. I mean the sort of, what you faced as a kid, what you faced as an adult in Russia. What do you want your story to tell us all?

BG: I don’t want to be cliche and say this, but don’t judge a book by its cover, that’s for sure. Like, don’t, don’t judge somebody off of what they, a mistake they’ve made in their life, and base, you know, something off of them. I’ve had so many people come up to me after, after all this, and say, you know, “You’re completely different than what I thought after reading your book and after hearing about your ordeal.” I’m just like, I know, because headlines are supposed to pull you in. Headlines are supposed to be, you know, catchy and extreme and dramatic, but you know, once you learn the story and learn something about me, guarantee we can relate, come find some common ground. So, get the full picture, get the full picture, and I hope you know the young ones and everybody who is reading this story literally, it can help them in some way get through something tough in their life. Because that’s the best legacy I can leave. Like basketball is all cool. Trophies, they’re gonna rust, and they’re going to tarnish and go away. But, you know, the way I’ve lived my life, the way I’ve, you know, expressed it to everybody, I hope that that can help someone, and that’s a legacy I want to leave.

DG: Well, I really, really appreciate you chatting and your honesty, and yeah, it was just lovely meeting you.

BG: Thank you. I appreciate that. This was awesome.

DG: Next time on Sports in America.

[MUSIC]

REX CHAPMAN: They came in there for sure, thinking they were just gonna waltz in and win. We really had nothing to lose.

DG: We’ll sit down with former number one NBA draft pick turned social media star, Rex Chapman.

RC: You let a good player get going in this league and you gotta [EXPLETIVE] problem.

DG: We’ll talk about his epic face-offs with his friend Michael Jordan, how pressure out of college led to depression and a devastating battle with addiction, and how he now uses his massive social media platform to advocate for social change.

RC: I really am just fortunate and thankful waking up every day knowing I don’t have to deal with a drug dealer or the pharmacy or a doctor.

DG: Rex Chapman’s remarkable turnaround. That is next time on Sports in America.

Hey, we would also love to hear from you on the show, so we’d love it if you would drop us a line. You can write us at sportsInamerica@whyy.org. One more time, that’s sportsInamerica@whyy.org. Thanks, everybody, and we hope to see you next time here on Sports In America.

This is Sports In American, I’m your host, David Greene.

Our executive producers are Joan Isabella and Tom Garhsler.

Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg. And our associate producer is Bibiana Correa.

Our engineer is Mike Villers. Our theme music is composed by Emma Munger. Our talent booker is Britt Kahn. Our tile artwork was created by Bea Walling.

Sports in America is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia and is distributed by PRX. Some of our interviews were originally created by Religion of Sports, with special thanks to Adam Schlossman. You can find Sports in America on Apple Podcasts. Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeartRadio app, you know, wherever you get your podcasts.

collapse

Host: David Greene
Executive Producers: Joan Isabella, Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Talent Booker: Britt Kahn
Engineer: Mike Villers
Tile Art: Bea Walling
Theme Song: Emma Munger
Sports in America is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.

collapse