Following her exciting return to the US after months in Russian detention, WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner is back on a basketball court.
Wearing a Title IX T-shirt, Phoenix Suns shorts and black Chuck Taylor sneakers, Griner’s first move on the Texas basketball court was a dunk, her agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas told ESPN.
Griner — who was released Thursday from what the U.S. said was illegal detention in a prisoner swap with notorious convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout — arrived at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio for a routine evaluation early Friday. Officials have not said how long he will be there.
The Phoenix Mercury center is unsure about returning to the WNBA, Colas told ESPN. The 2023 WNBA regular season begins on May 19. Griner had often played in Russia during the WNBA offseason.
CNN has reached out to Colas for comment.
“If she wants to play, it’s going to be hers to share,” Colas told ESPN’s TJ Quinn. “He has the holidays to rest and decide what to do next without any pressure. He is doing very, very well. He seems to have endured this in incredible ways.”
But on and off the field, Griner’s life has been changed forever, and challenges to his reinstatement could arise any day, a US-based official who was held abroad for years told CNN.
“She is rejoining a world that has changed for her now. From a purely safety standpoint, he’s not going to be able to move in the world like he did,” Colas told ESPN.
“It’s not a fate she asked for, but I think she’ll try to use her fame for good.”
Griner’s release took months to negotiate and marked the end of months in confinement after the basketball star was arrested for drugs at a Russian airport in February and subsequently sentenced to nine years in prison.
It is unclear how long Griner, 32, will remain in Texas for a medical evaluation.
“I understand it’s going to be a few more days before it comes out,” former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson told CNN on Sunday.
Richardson and his center work privately on behalf of families of hostages and detainees. He previously traveled to Russia to discuss Griner’s release, as well as Paul Whelan, a former US Marine who was illegally detained and remains in custody.
Richardson said it’s important to give former inmates like Griner enough time to settle.
“We have to give them some space, some time to adjust because they had a horrible experience in those Russian prisons,” said Richardson, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration.
During her stay in Russia, Griner had to cut off her now-famous dreadlocks to make life easier during the Russian winter, Griner’s Russian lawyer, Maria Blagovolina, told ESPN and confirmed to CNN.
Most of the women in the penal colony worked sewing uniforms, but the 9-foot-9 Olympic gold medalist was too tall to sit at a work table and her hands were too large to handle the sewing. So she carried cloth all day, her lawyer said.
On the day of her release, Griner had a feeling she would be returning home, said the President’s Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens, who led the prisoner exchange mission to the United Arab Emirates.
But it didn’t feel real until he got on the plane and told her, ‘On behalf of the President of the United States Joe Biden and Secretary of State Tony Blinken, I’m here to take you home,'” Carstens recalled. CNN.
He described Griner as an intelligent, compassionate, humble and patriotic person who immediately wanted to thank all the crew members who helped her.
“When she finally got on the American plane, I said, ‘Brittney, you must have been through a lot in the last 10 months. Here is your position. Feel free to decompress. We’ll give you your space,’” Carstens recalls.
“And he said, “Oh no. I have been in prison for 10 months and I can speak Russian, I want to talk. But first of all, who are these guys?’ And he walked right past me and went to every member of that crew, looked them in the eye, shook their hands and asked them and took their names, making a personal connection with them. It was really amazing,” Carstens said.
Griner spent 12 hours of an 18-hour flight talking to Carstens “about everything under the sun,” he said.
Jorge Toledo – one of the “Citgo 6” – spoke to CNN on Saturday about how reintegration into society can take time and effort after prolonged captivity.
Toledo was released as part of a prisoner swap in October after being held while on a business trip to Venezuela in 2017 with other oil and gas executives from Citgo Corporation.
Having spent five years in captivity, Toledo said he returned home with sleep and other health problems and saw small, everyday tasks like driving become sources of stress.
Toledo said he was part of a program in San Antonio that included six days with a team of psychologists. He said the program was “extremely important” to his reintegration and hopes Griner can take advantage of similar resources.
WNBA Commissioner Kathy Engelbert said while the league would love to see her, “we’re going to give her time and space and get her medically evaluated, mentally, emotionally and physically.”
Griner’s friend and WNBA player Angel McCoughtry said he knows Griner will need time and space, but believes she will eventually return to the basketball court.
“We missed him last year. It wasn’t the same in the WNBA without her,” McCoughtry said. “We don’t start until May, so that gives her a couple of months to get herself together and get back in shape and get back into the groove, smell the American air again.”
While many are celebrating Griner’s return, the fate of another American being held in Russia remains uncertain.
Whelan – a citizen of the US, Ireland, Britain and Canada – is currently imprisoned in a Russian penal colony after being arrested in December 2018 on espionage charges, which he has denied. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
With Griner now back in the U.S., Richardson said he is optimistic about Whelan’s release and noted that Russia previously offered a trade for Whelan.
The US tried to persuade Russia to swap Griner and Whelan for Bout, but Russian officials did not budge on the issue, with Russia saying the Americans’ cases were treated differently based on the charges each faced.
“This was not a choice about which American to bring home,” Biden said last week. “Unfortunately, for completely illegal reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s case. And while we have not yet managed to secure Paul’s release, we are not giving up. We will never give up.”
Whelan said he was glad Griner was freed, but told CNN, “I’m very disappointed that more hasn’t been done to secure my release, especially as it’s been four years since my arrest.”
