US basketball
Griner: Never play for a foreign team again
WNBA basketball player Brittney Griner speaks at a press conference. photo
© Matt York/AP/dpa
Brittney Griner speaks at her first press conference since returning from Russian custody. The US basketball player only wants to play abroad under one condition.
American basketball player Brittney Griner never wants to play for a foreign team outside the US again after serving 10 months in Russia. More than four months after her return, the 32-year-old spoke to more than 100 people at the first press conference since her release.
“I will never play abroad again unless I’m representing my country at the Olympics,” Griner said of her WNBA team Phoenix Mercury. “If I make the team, it would be the only time I leave American soil.”
Griner also spoke about her resilience through her experiences as a professional athlete. “I’m no stranger to tough times,” she said. “You will face adversity in life. That was a pretty big one. I just relied on my hard work to get through it.” Also present at the press conference were her wife, Cherelle, and Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs.
Griner was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in early February 2022 and later sentenced to nine years in prison for illegal drug possession and attempted smuggling. At that time she played for the team UMMC Yekaterinburg in the Urals. At the beginning of December last year, she was released as part of a prisoner exchange for the Russian arms dealer Viktor But.