It took 294 days, but Brittney Griner is coming home. It brings joy, relief, and a reminder of how complicated things remain.
Brittney Griner #BrittneyGriner
Cherelle Griner was in the Oval Office when the news she’d been waiting for officially came. Her wife, American basketball star Brittney Griner, was headed home.
“The most overwhelming emotion I have right now is just sincere gratitude,” Cherelle told reporters at the White House, a face so full of relief and joy it nearly jumped through the camera, ready to be shared by all. How could we not?
Cherelle put a voice to an entire sports community that has been riveted by Griner’s plight and been committed to keeping her story alive across the 294 days she was in Russian custody, with advocacy that ranged from the simplicity of NBA players wearing “We are BG T-shirts” before games to the seriousness of the behind-the-scenes lobbying of lawmakers on Griner’s behalf by the WNBA’s players’ association.
All those efforts came to fruition Thursday, when Griner was released through a one-for-one prisoner exchange that sent international arms dealer Viktor Bout to Russian authorities. Once President Joe Biden tweeted the news, “She is safe. She is on a plane. She is on her way home,” Cherelle was at a microphone making sure to thank every person who’d helped bring an end to what she described as “one of the darkest moments of my life.”
“It’s a happy day for me and my family so I’m going to smile right now,” she said.
She deserves every one of those smiles, with a holiday season ahead full of family time and celebration.
But her last two words are very important here, too. In hedging her joy with the phrase, “right now,” Cherelle spoke to all the surrounding issues in Brittney Griner’s case, how wrongful detention of Americans in Russia is an ongoing problem, and really, that no matter how much a segment of the world wants to keep sports and politics separate, they remain inextricably linked.
Who is Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer swapped for Brittney Griner?
What should be a pure moment of celebration for a high profile athlete wrongfully detained over a trumped up drug charge so that Russia could use her as a political pawn has met with predictable backlash for those who want to discredit Griner being among those American athletes who knelt during the national anthem at home. In admitting to the mistake of having cannabis-derived oil cartridges in her luggage when she landed in Russia, Griner provided all the ammunition anyone who already hated her needed to insist she got what she deserved.
That she was arrested just as Russia was beginning its unlawful invasion of Ukraine was conveniently ignored, just as the reality of why she was landing in Russia to play basketball gets subsumed by political parrying. WNBA players have long been driven to augment their comparatively paltry American salaries by playing all over Europe, with the US still playing the long game of catch-up on support of women’s pro sports.
When you factor in Griner’s high-profile status as a Black and gay woman, the totalitarian and intolerant Russian government had more than enough reasons to want to make an example of her.
They got plenty more mileage out of her incarceration than that of her fellow prisoner, U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who remains in Russian custody despite being part of early negotiations that would have included him in a two-for-one or two-for-two prisoner exchange today. The “right now” Cherelle spoke of was a heartfelt recognition of Whelan’s continuing plight.
“Today my family is whole but as you all are aware there are so many other families who are not whole,” she said. “BG is not here to say this but I will gladly speak on her behalf and say that BG and I remain committed to the work of getting every American home, including Paul, whose family is in our hearts today. As we celebrate BG being home, we do understand that there are still people out here enduring what I did for the last nine months of missing tremendously their loved ones.”
Much love, too, to the Whelan family, for this gracious statement:
“I am so glad that Brittney Griner is on her way home,” David Whelan, Paul’s brother, said in a statement published by the Associated Press. “As the family member of a Russian hostage, I can literally only imagine the joy she will have, being reunited with her loved ones, and in time for the holidays. There is no greater success than for a wrongful detainee to be freed and for them to go home. The Biden Administration made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home and to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn’t going to happen.”
It wasn’t easy, and it remains complicated. But it shouldn’t be controversial. Griner is home, as she should be. Here’s hoping Whelan and others soon follow.