Brittney Griner's Story Will Reverberate Far Past 2022
As 2022 wraps up, SI staffers Jon Wertheim and Chris Almeida will discuss some of the themes of the year in sports. So far, they've covered sportswashing, what did and didn't change during a wild year in college sports, the new formula for removing problematic owners, and Amazon's entry into the broadcasting market. Up today: the ripple effects of Brittney Griner's detention in Russia.
Jon Wertheim: Now that Brittney Griner is back safely and this predictably found its way into the culture wars, I think we can really step back and talk about how significant this story was on a number of levels. One: this was a real window into how problematic Russia is and how arbitrary justice is. This was ruthless. What, exactly, did she have on her, again?
Chris Almeida: Hashish oil.
JW: Right. This was a really scary, compelling, clear insight into what a brutal, morally vacant regime this is. The fact that she was facing this sentence for this offense is absolutely outrageous. It's one thing to say that Russia is an authoritarian state. All of these cut-and-paste adjectives couldn’t show, in a way that this series of events did, just how bad this process can be. Whether it's Griner not getting a translator or her getting sent to a penal colony for this. This was a really scary but clear look into Russia, not just the penalty but the process as well.
Again, before Griner’s return, this might not have been the discussion to have, but now we can ask: are athletes, especially WNBA players going to go to foreign countries to supplement their income? Why would you play basketball in Russia after this? In a number of countries, you could easily be at risk of being put in a situation where you could do nothing wrong and still be arrested and get no semblance of due process and be dealing with a language barrier… the WNBA Players Association will certainly see an opportunity here to pressure the league to raise salaries to a point where players won’t have to do this kind of moonlighting. That will be interesting. But in the short term, before that happens, you have these huge opportunities overseas for WNBA players to make multiples of their salary in the offseason. But you've got to think most players are going to pass those up or rethink them entirely. And then, the other thing is: this is a national story. It obviously has global and geopolitical angles. And now Brittney Griner is going to play! I mean, who’s not gonna watch that?
So I think that everybody held back on a lot of these conversations while we didn't know about her status. Because that might have been distasteful or, worse, directly bad for her well being.
CA: Yeah, now that we can take a step back, you have to think this will impact decisions all over the sports world. Not just WNBA players in Russia. You have to wonder about athletes across all sports, not even necessarily American athletes, and how they might be recalculating. If you’re a former NBA player playing in China right now, do you think twice about extending your career or making supplemental income or basically doing everything that became normal for basketball players over the last 30 years.
JW: Yeah, we love romanticizing the fish-out-of-water stories, whether it’s Mr. Baseball or Stephon Marbury in China. But now we can see just how real the consequences can be in some of these situations.
This was really significant, also, because we saw different coverage of a story. A lot of outlets pulled back because her camp didn’t want to jeopardize negotiations with the Russian government…I just think that we’re going to be hearing a lot about this story even a decade from now.
CA: It was a weird story on a lot of fronts, right? Like you just mentioned how most outlets were covering this at the beginning. And you and I, we were involved in all these discussions. And it was weird considering how to cover this because you could legitimately get someone killed by trying to write a story. I remember there was a story in New York shortly after Griner was arrested. And it was asking: Why isn’t this the biggest sports story in America? And that was a little annoying. Because it was pretty obvious why.
JW: Right, people were specifically asked to show restraint. It wasn’t that everybody was just lazy and missed the boat or that there were structural factors making everybody ignore the story despite its relevance.
CA: And so this was pretty singular. I’ve never seen a story covered like—I mean, given, I've not been in this business for decades—but this was the first time I've had experience with something where it's really felt like your coverage, in sports, could have a real-time impact at this scale.
