The WNBA star is returning to basketball after missing the 2022 season while imprisoned in Russia.
Brittney Griner is returning to the WNBA.
After spending nearly ten months in a Russian prison for allegedly smuggling “narcotic drugs” into the country last February, the 32-year-old basketball player Brittney Griner has returned to the Phoenix Mercury on a one-year, $165,100 contract, according to ESPN.
Brittney Griner re-signed with the team after last appearing in the 2021 season, averaging 17.7 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 1.8 assists. She expressed her desire to rejoin the team after returning to the United States in December.
“I also want to be very clear about one thing,” Griner wrote in a lengthy Instagram post. “This season, I plan to play basketball for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.”
Griner said, “And in doing so, I look forward to being able to say ‘thank you’ in person to those of you who advocated, wrote, and posted for me.”
She had her first basketball workout that month, with her agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, telling ESPN that she would take the holiday season to think about her next steps.
“At this time, there is no timetable for her return,” Colas told ESPN. “She’s readjusting to a world that has changed for her.
Colas says, “If she wants to play, she will have to share. She has the holidays to figure out what she wants to do next. She’s doing fantastically well. She appears to have dealt with it in extraordinary ways.”
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert expressed similar sentiments during NBA All-Star Weekend after meeting Griner in person. “I met with her in Phoenix,” Engelbert told NEWS This Morning’s Poppy Harlow today, ahead of NBA All-Star Weekend. “Britney is doing exceptionally well, and she has begun to train. We’re overjoyed to have her back in the league after such a traumatic experience.”
The Phoenix Mercury will kick off their season on the road against the Los Angeles Sparks on May 19.