Brittney Griner makes an emotional return to the WNBA as Mercury opens the season against the Sparks

After a tumultuous nearly 600-day absence from the league, Brittney Griner officially returned to the field for the Phoenix Mercury.

Griner and the Mercury kicked off the 2023 WNBA season Friday night with their game against the Los Angeles Sparks at the Crypto.com Arena, which marked Griner’s first real WNBA game since her 10-month stint in a Russian prison.

This, of course, led to a rather emotional pre-game scene in downtown Los Angeles.

Griner was arrested at a Moscow-area airport in February 2022 after officers allegedly found e-cartridges containing hash oil in her luggage. She spent the next ten months in Russia and was deemed “unlawfully detained” by the United States government.

Finally, in December, Griner returned home as part of a prisoner swap. She vowed to play for the Mercury immediately, but ruled out playing internationally again, except for Team USA at the Olympics.

Friday’s game won’t be Griner’s first since her release from Russia. She attended the Mercury’s first of two preseason games earlier this month but was admittedly rusty. Still, just taking part in this game was a big moment for her.

“I didn’t think I’d be sitting here playing basketball so soon,” Griner said after her preseason game against the Sparks on May 12. “When I came back, I didn’t know how going back into it was going to go. I won’t take a day for granted, but it took a lot to take it all in and it was good to have that day behind us before we head to LA.”

Griner’s story and return this summer will undoubtedly be one of the biggest in the entire WNBA, regardless of how the rest of the season goes for the Mercury.

But for the first time in almost two years, things seemed to be back to normal for Griner on Friday night. That’s really all that matters.

Why Brittney Griner is running for the anthem now

On Friday morning, Griner’s agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas wrote an article for Time.com announcing that Griner would be running for the national anthem this season — something she and many others in the WNBA have quit doing in recent years.

The story goes on

“Others, including Brittney Griner, plan to stand up – physically, for the anthem itself and symbolically for the right of those around them to make their voices heard and speak their minds loud and boldly, in keeping with this country’s proudest traditions, as well.” whenever they do.” See fitting,” Kagawa Colas wrote.

That’s exactly what Griner did on Friday night in Los Angeles.

Most WNBA players and teams chose to remain in the locker room during the national anthem last season. The protest, which has become commonplace across the sports world, began with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first beginning to protest during the anthem in 2016. This protest essentially resulted in his being kicked out of the league and he hasn’t played since. He privately settled a complaint against the league in 2019.

Although Griner’s move on Friday represented a change from what she’d done in the past, Kagawa Colas didn’t want him to hear “from the same ‘shut up and dribble’ voices that reflexively attack and distort any principled athlete’s facial expression. misinterpreted is dissent.”

“During a sham trial and wrongful conviction, Brittney was literally locked in a cage too small for her stature, deprived of her essential American liberties and stripped of even her most basic rights, she, supported by many other players, will make a statement here. “We intend to win the WNBA season by championing these uniquely American freedoms — the foremost of which is the absolute, inviolable, and constitutionally protected freedom to stand, sit, kneel, praise, protest, and kneel.” other ways to make your voice heard,” she wrote.

“By embracing and appreciating each other’s freedom to express themselves differently, WNBA athletes celebrate what it means to be a patriot. They transform the sadistic ploy of imprisonment intended by BG [Russian president Vladimir] Putin was to serve as a racial and political wedge, a reminder of the vibrancy, diversity and strength of all that America’s adversaries hoped to defeat. Last but not least, each and every one of them shows an unmistakable solidarity with Brittney – even if they express their point of view by bending their knees.”