The WNBA is a sisterhood.
After the conclusion of their All-Star game on Sunday, the WNBA players made it very clear they stood by their sister Brittney Griner. Support for Griner was fully-fledged on Sunday, July 10, when every player in the WNBA All-Star Game donned Griner’s number 42 on their jerseys during the second half of play.
Last Thursday, July 7, Griner was put on trial in Russia on a drug smuggling charge stemming from her detainment at a Moscow airport back in February. Griner pleaded guilty to the charge, but added there was no intent to break the Russian law.
There has been no verdict, but Griner could face a 10-year sentence. She may believe she did herself a favor pleading guilty; but, it may have done more harm than good.
Hugh Dugan, the former Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs under the Trump administration, told Fox News, “There would be more wiggle room if she hadn’t gotten to this point, I think, and let the system drag it out and not classify her as such. But this, in my mind, can make her a more valuable resource for Russia, because now they can say we have a legitimate criminal under their law, and we have to be true to our system, etc.”
In recent talks by the U.S. government about a rescue plan for Griner, a prisoner swap has come up a few times. One of the prisoners eligible to be swapped for Griner is Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death.” Bout is serving a 25-year sentence for conspiring to kill U.S. citizens and providing aid to a terrorist organization.
Obviously, the U.S. had no communication with Griner to tell her to not plead guilty. But they’ve also had 5 months to try and free her before it got to that point.
WNBA players and Griner’s family members have all been calling attention to the problem at hand. The court at the All-Star Game was lined with ‘BG42’ in honor of Griner and her situation.
“We just wanted to make sure at some point that we were able to, on national television, obviously in front of a crowd, put Brittney’s name in the forefront,” said Seattle Storm guard Sue Bird. “That was our way of honoring her.”
The WNBA has gone above and beyond—not taking their foot off the gas for a second, with regard to support for Griner. There is only so much they can do, though. “BG’s one of us. She’s our sister,” said All-Star team captain A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces. “And at the end of the day, we’re going to do whatever we can to amplify the platform that we have to make sure that everyone is doing what they need to do to make sure that she gets home safely.”
The hold up in the swap may lie in the significance of the crimes the prisoners have committed. “When we get to swapping something like this with a hardened terrorist, the proportionality is not the same,” said Dugan. “And that’s always a big concern in negotiation that we don’t devalue our person to the point where the next day that same country will take another one of our tourists and another American innocently walking around for the sake of leveraging against some major foreign policy asset that we hold of theirs.”
A growing sense is that the coming weeks are crucial to get Griner out of Russia. It’s an unfortunate situation Griner has found herself in, and the speedy return of her to home soil would be a major relief. It all comes down to: what does Russia want? And what will the U.S. give them in return?
