Brittney Griner

WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert issued a statement saying the league is continuing its effort to aide in Griner's release.

The plea also came after Griner's WNBA team held a public rally in support of the 6-foot-9 center with several hundred fans in attendance. "One hundred thirty-nine days have passed since my wife has been able to speak to me, to our family, and our friends," Cherelle Griner said during the rally, stopping to compose herself several times. "We're basketball players and coaches, but when your friend is in danger, when your friend is saying in a letter that they're scared, those things are hard to get away from," Mercury coach Vanessa Nygaard said. "Brittney Griner remains wrongfully detained in Russia and nothing that happened today changes that 140 days later," Englebert said. "What we do know is that the U.S. State Department determined that Brittney Griner was wrongfully detained for a reason and we'll leave it at that." "The WNBPA stands with Brittney Griner. With a 99% conviction rate, Russia's process is its own.

Why did NBA All-Star and Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner plead guilty to drug charges? Here's everything we know about the case.

CNN adds that her lawyers hope her admission — in addition to the fact that "she was clean, and she was tested" for traces of drugs — will lead the court to offer her leniency. A White House press secretary has said the basketball star's guilty plea "will have no impact on any of the negotiations'' involving her case. I didn't want to break the law."

In February 2022, Brittney Griner, the legendary WNBA basketball player, was arrested in Moscow for allegedly having illegal vape cartridges. Now Russia is ...

His freedom could not restore that, and he will be forever known as the Merchant of Death, a stain he will never be able to remove. Bout has already lost what he most valued — his ability to move freely across the globe and act with impunity as an agent of chaos in the service of his Russian handlers and his own interests. The diplomatic and Department of Justice efforts to get Bout to the U.S. to stand trial were a testament to how a whole of government approach can work when done well. In his later years, he was reined in by the Russian state under Putin, no longer able to freelance at will and without unfettered access to massive caches of weapons. Bout ran an aviation and weapons empire from the fall of the Soviet Union until his arrest in Thailand in 2008. In November 2011, the notorious Russian weapons trafficker Viktor Bout was sentenced by a New York court to 25 years in prison for his crimes.

In February, according to her own telling, WNBA star and Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner did exactly what many of us have done at some point in our ...

The plight of basketball star Brittney Griner has become a hot political issue. Griner has been detained in Russia since February amid allegations that she ...

See All We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter. A lot of people are watching the case with interest — and her supporters insist Biden needs to make it a higher priority.

Basketball star Brittney Griner has pleaded guilty to bringing drugs into Russia. The Womens National Basketball Association (WNBA) star and Olympic gold medal ...

I’m frustrated that my wife is not going to get justice." In her statement she said: “I’d like to plead guilty, your honor. I didn’t want to break the law. She also took to Instagram sharing that she was “hopeful” the President had read Griner’s letter and that they would “find comfort in knowing she has not been forgotten". I’m frustrated." The basketball player has also written to President Biden, expressing fears she was: “terrified [she] might be here forever”

Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges in Russia after being imprisoned for more than four months. She could face 10 years in prison.

We had never seen anyone like Griner. Lucky for us, she attended Baylor, where we got to see her blossom into arguably the most physically dominant center in women’s basketball history. She shattered the 31-year-old state tournament single-game scoring record with 44 points by making a record 19 of 21 field-goal attempts. When Houston Nimitz qualified for state, I quickly determined to get her on the phone for an interview. The oohs and ahs quickly turned to boos when the officials showed up, which in Texas high school basketball circles meant “no more dunks.” She added 18 rebounds in the 74-47 win. Upon her arrival at the Erwin Center, for Nimitz’s semifinal clash against Pflugerville, it quickly became evident that this wasn’t the average girls state tournament. My introduction to Griner came before the 2009 Class 5A girls UIL state basketball tournament. Could you imagine Tom Brady languishing in a Russian prison for more than a couple of days? Griner is a wife, a mother, a daughter and a teammate. Her Mercury teammates have included her in all team activities in absentia, conducted rallies in her honor and worn "Free BG" T-shirts all season. Would our government sit on its hands if LeBron James or Tiger Woods were pitifully videotaped in handcuffs walking through a Russian courtroom? BG is living a nightmare.

Brittney Griner's guilty plea has stirred conversations about a potential prisoner swap between the United States and Russia, which experts say could turn ...

In this sense, the opportunities for quiet diplomacy in this particular case seem to have gone by the wayside." So it will be a battle of semantics in one sense that mirrors the Russia and U.S. confrontation over control of Ukraine." The Russians insist that the arrest is legitimate, and they want the U.S. to acknowledge it. "When we get to swapping something like this with a hardened terrorist, the proportionality is not the same. The U.S. side doesn’t consider Ms. Griner’s arrest as legitimate, even though a substance that’s illegal was found in her possession. I didn't want to break the law," she said, adding that she will give her testimony at a later date. "This brings her closer to being identified as a sentenced convict with less than 1% chance of acquittal. "The Russian judicial system might enjoy giving her slightly less and taking some credit for showing some leniency, but I don't think we're talking about her being released," Schwartz said. "We have a long-standing framework for discussing such issues. So he might surprise us again." "I'd like to plead guilty, your honor. She could face up to 10 years in prison.

Until Russia's courts, with their near perfect conviction rate, conclude the trial process, very little is likely to change.

Clearly this case has now become a political case, and there are already discussions, allegedly, about having a plea agreement and a prisoner swap with a Russian prisoner for Brittney Griner," he said. The admission of guilt could play in Griner's favor in the long term, as it may lead to a shorter trial than would be expected if her legal team were to mount a fierce resistance to the charges. "We'll have to see if she gets the maximum sentence. From a procedural standpoint, under Russia's legal system a pardon or prisoner swap can only happen if the individual has already been convicted. "We of course hope for the leniency of the court," the basketball player's Russian lawyer, Maria Blagovolina, was quoted as saying by local media on Thursday outside a Moscow courthouse. Griner is expected to give testimony during the next hearing, which is scheduled for July 14.

Celebrated US basketball star Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges in a Moscow court on Thursday (July 7), with hopes of a more lenient sentence, ...

The US State Department said that Griner was “wrongfully detained” and some critics accuse Russia of using the basketball star as a political pawn in the present crisis. … Attempts to present the case as if the American was detained illegally do not hold up,” as reported by The Guardian. US Embassy officials attended Griner’s trial on Thursday after which Secretary of State Anthony Blinken tweeted that a letter from President Joe Biden was delivered to her. Many WNBA athletes chose to play overseas because of the massive pay disparity compared to their male counterparts in the National Basketball Association (NBA), whose earnings can go up to tens of millions of dollars. The two-time Olympic gold medallist has been in custody since February 17, when two vape cartridges containing small amounts of cannabis oil were found in her luggage while she was at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. Standing at 6 feet 9 inches, the centre player has been with the team Phoenix Mercury since 2013.

Brittney Griner is a pawn, caught between Russia and the U.S. during a particularly tense time in the relationship between the two superpowers, writes CBC ...

Griner and her lawyers could have undertaken a long and costly trial, but in a country where the odds of an acquittal are even more remote than they are in the U.S., fighting this case likely looked like a waste of several weeks and countless dollars. #FreeBrittneyGriner 140 days our friend and sister @brittneygriner has been wrongfully detainee in a Russian prison. A technical glitch, for sure, but hardly a sign that U.S. diplomats were treating this case with the urgency it deserved. Earlier this month, Dawn Staley, head coach of the women's team at the University of South Carolina, added a pointed Twitter message at President Biden to her long series of public statements in support of Griner. Russian cops could have charged Griner with something more in line with her alleged offence, threatened her with the local equivalent of a light sanction and moved on. To recap, the Russian government has reportedly proposed freeing Griner in exchange for Viktor Bout, a convicted arms dealer, nicknamed "The Merchant of Death," currently serving 25 years in federal prison. The point where the U.S. can call Russia's bluff, because they also have something Russia wants. "#FreeBrittneyGriner 138 days our friends and sister @brittneygriner has been wrongfully detained in a Russia prison," Staley tweeted. So if the Biden administration isn't already on the phone trying to arrange a swap, maybe they've deduced, reasonably, that the two people involved aren't of equal value. This is the charge and the allegation Russia expects the rest of us to reconcile? But they pressed ahead with a process that defies any sense of proportion between potential punishment and alleged crime, while conveniently putting the U.S. in a sticky diplomatic position. "There was no intent," Griner reportedly told a Russian judge while entering her plea.

Brittney Griner has pleaded guilty in the Russian court where she's on trial for drug possession. NPR's A Martinez talks with veteran defense lawyer ...

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The W.N.B.A. star's appearances this week during her trial on drug charges in Russia highlighted the unclear path to her release and heightened her ...

I visited the arena in April for a Mercury preseason game and was surprised by the muted acknowledgment of Griner in a city where she has given so much. “Free B.G.,” said DeWanna Bonner, of the W.N.B.A.’s Connecticut Sun, speaking to the press. Known as B.G., she helped lead the Mercury to a W.N.B.A. title in 2014 but is as admired there for helping the homeless and championing L.G.B.T.Q. rights. At the time, Griner’s Mercury teammates were following the lead of her advisers, who had decided to stay low-key and not raise a ruckus that might draw Putin’s ire. Over social media, in news conferences and interviews, players demanded that Biden and the White House do whatever was needed to bring her home. The approach flipped a few weeks later when the U.S. State Department declared that Griner had been “wrongfully detained.” The league and its players began to roar — the same as they often do on pressing social issues. Male athletes are the beneficiaries of a sports ecosystem in which their leagues garner more TV time, their endorsements generate more money and their accomplishments are more loudly lauded. It’s a statement about the value of a Black person. It’s a statement about the value of a gay person.” If this were James in custody — or Stephen Curry or Tom Brady — it stands to reason that their fame would push a more fervent mainstream call for release than has been the case for Griner. If this were James in custody, well, a whole lot more than a few hundred people would have shown up to rally for his release. The Mercury center’s teammates, supporters and wife, Cherelle Griner, have not been able to speak with her directly.

Brittney Griner wasn't the first female basketball great to look for a better paycheck in Russian leagues.

Henry Abbott, another former ESPN basketball writer who now runs the digital media company True Hoop, ran the money-laundering rumors by a source: “I asked a veteran of the game, and she laughed, asked if I really didn’t know. The NBA is projecting $10 billion in revenue this season, according to Commissioner Adam Silver. Though the WNBA generates $60 million in revenue annually, Silver said in 2018 that its costs exceed that amount, and the league has lost $10 million on average each year that it has existed. “The only reason you go there is for money,” Taurasi said on an ESPN podcast that aired in 2020. Countries with tense relationships with the U.S. are more often the same ones that offer the most to America’s basketball greats. Griner reportedly makes $1 million a year overseas playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg in the Russian Premier League. For the Mercury, her salary was $221,450 for the 2021-22 season, making her one of the WNBA's highest-paid players. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has pushed back on the theory that playing overseas is strictly a financial decision. Her next court hearing is scheduled for July 14, and Griner’s legal team said they expect the trial to conclude at the beginning of August, according to Reuters. The WNBA Players Association did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment. Russian authorities detained Griner, a seven-time WNBA All-Star for the Phoenix Mercury and an NCAA champion at Baylor University, at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport in February after claiming to find two vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her carry-on luggage. Just because, you know, she can't make enough money in the WNBA, like, to sustain her life." I didn’t want to break the law,” Griner told a judge Thursday at the second hearing of her trial, according to Reuters. “I’d like to give my testimony later. I need time to prepare.” Griner said in court that she had packed in a rush and the vape cartridges made it into her bag by accident, according to Russian media reports.

Cherelle Griner, wife of detained Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner, said President Joe Biden has written a letter back to Griner.

The basketball star played in Russia's women's basketball league during the WNBA off-season. Cherelle said the Biden administration is the first her wife ever voted for. "I was able to read the letter, and it brought me so much joy, as well as BG," Cherelle said Friday. "I believe every word that she said to him he understood.

Brittney Griner's wife, Cherelle, was joined by Rev. Al Sharpton and WNBA representatives at a press conference in Chicago ahead of All-Star weekend.

“She is a champion on the court, a champion that should’ve been on the court here this weekend,” Sharpton said. “We are BG. Get her home now.” “But she was a champion yesterday when she stood up and said, ‘I may have done something unintentional. She stood up and owned it. I hope the world knows that she has stood up as that role model.” The press conference came a day after Brittney pleaded guilty to drug charges in Russian court.