One week ago, an ejected and dejected Brittney Griner sat in the Mercury locker room during a game against the Los Angeles Sparks and responded to Instagram posts calling her a man and questioning her toughness in Russia.
It was typical social media sludge from faceless and soulless posters flexing muscles enhanced by bigotry and lies.
On the day of potentially the Mercury’s last game of the season, it’s time to stop the hate. Show some grace. As we celebrate Diana Taurasi for her accomplished career, embrace, too, Griner’s strong 2024 season, her second since spending 293 days in Russian prisons.
She has persevered. Again.
Why, nearly 10 months after her release, are people still piling on?
Griner’s book, “Coming Home,” released in May, details not only the mental and physical pain she endured during imprisonment but the challenges she faced growing up.
This is why I started hooping. It made me feel truly visible. It also made me feel less like an outsider ... When you’re still flat chested by eighth grade, people talk. Girls in the locker room point and whisper, “Is she a boy, a dyke, a freak? Why is her voice so low?
Basketball also provided a respite during college.
When you’re 6 foot 9 and wear size 17 men’s sneakers, you don’t fit. Not in cars. Not in chairs. Not in beds. Not in crowds. And definitely in a world that mistakes you for what it most fears: a Black man.
Stop questioning who Griner is and let her be. People come out of the womb differently. By middle school she was tall and had a deep voice. Her parents were concerned she had a tumor on her pituitary gland and she succumbed to the role of lab rat. She dealt with constant bullying.
Basketball changed everything. She dunked as a sophomore in high school, it went viral on YouTube and suddenly she had an identity, support, respect.
It led her to the WNBA, where she helped grow the audience for women’s basketball. But because the league can’t compete with the salaries of other countries, Griner, like many top U.S. women’s players, played overseas, where she earned a million-plus salary annually versus the $220,000 the Mercury paid her in 2022.
That February is when her life took an unfathomable turn.
Yes, she was dumb. En route to her overseas gig in Russia, she forgot she left two vape pens containing 0.7 grams of medically prescribed cannabis in her backpack.
Officials discovered it after she landed in Moscow.
A nine-year sentence for drug smuggling and possession six months after her arrest hardly fit the crime, and anyone who suggests otherwise is looking at this through a distorted lens. Her lawyer told her that half of Russia’s 36 trials that year for the same crime resulted in the defendant receiving a suspended sentence.
She was a pawn in a country trying to send a message, yet many continue to suggest she got what she deserved.
Did she deserve humiliation?
“Off,” the doctor ordered. I looked at him, dumbfounded. Off? “Everything off," he reiterated. In shock and humiliation, I removed my boxers. Then my socks. Even my glasses. I didn’t cover my privates, nor did I cower or tremble. I just tried to escape my body, pretend I wasn’t there. Two guards exchanged a glance. The rest gazed. I sensed they expected me to fall apart, some weak-ass American. I stood tall as the doctor snapped photos and motioned for me to rotate. Front. Back. Side. Click. I felt like weeping but had no tears left.
Did she deserve slave labor?
We all had different shifts depending on our jobs, but Russian labor camps are called that for a reason. All inmates work 10-, 12-, or 15-hour-or-longer days. We earned a few rubles an hour, around 25¢. … I worked in sewing, in a factory-like building with row after row of Soviet-era machines. There was no ventilation and little heat. No bathroom breaks. We knew to empty our bladders during the 20-minute lunch break. Each group was given a quota, around 500 military uniforms a day. Teams who failed were berated.
Did she deserve indignity?
The shower was a tiny, tiled stall behind a folding screen. I was too big, so I squatted behind the screen, scooped water over my dreads, and tried to get clean. Meanwhile, the restroom buzzed. It was one big open area with four toilets facing each other and six sinks shared by all 50 of us. I saw a lot I didn’t want to see, and the room reeked, as did most of the women.
She eventually cut her hair short in prison because her deadlocks became knotted, then frozen, then moldy from the conditions.
People have called her anti-American.
Huh?
And if you have an issue with Griner coming home thanks to a prisoner swap that involved a Russian arms dealer, take it up with the government, not Griner. To this day, she works with Bring Our Families Home, a group formed in 2022 by the family members of American hostages and wrongful detainees held overseas.
Her return home was joyful but not easy. She has struggled with sleep. She has been subjected to the worst of social media trolls.
Yet she remains a pleasure to watch on the basketball court and still engages with fans. Sometimes you still see that childlike personality emerge.
So give her a break. Show some grace. Celebrate a woman who has battled a lifetime of bullying.
And if you can’t, bring your weak takes elsewhere.
Paola Boivin is a former columnist for The Arizona Republic and now is a professor at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Safely home, Brittney Griner has found more hate in the U.S.
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