Two weeks after she was harassed at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport prior to boarding a commercial flight, Mercury center Brittney Griner criticized the WNBA on Monday for allowing the travel situation to reach what she described as “rock bottom.”
During a video call following the team’s introduction of interim head coach Nikki Blue to replace fired coach Vanessa Nygaard, Griner was asked about the incident in Dallas in which she was harassed by a social media personality while walking through the airport, and how she felt the league has handled the team’s travel situation since.
“I’ll say this. I think we should have already had the option to use a different airline, a more private airline, charter flights,” Griner said, per ESPN’s M.A. Voepel. “It’s a shame that it had to get to rock bottom, because I feel like waiting for something to happen and then making a change … you don’t know what that ‘something’s’ going to be. We’ve all seen what can happen in this world.
“And when you play the ‘let’s-wait-and-see game,’ you’re really playing with fire. You’re playing with people’s lives. So I’m glad that they finally got it together—and, you know, are going to allow us to do this. It’s just a shame that it took so damn long, honestly.”
The league approved Griner to board charter flights in the wake of the incident. The precise parameters around the team’s travel setup have been tightly guarded all year, with the team and WNBA citing safety reasons, per ESPN.
Voepel reports that, in April, the league approved a “hybrid plan” that would allow Griner—but not the entire Mercury team—to fly on two preapproved charter flights, with the league retaining the option to approve more charter flights in the future. The league also approved team travel on JSX public charter flights, which don’t have routes to every WNBA city. JSX flights operate out of private terminals, which means the traveling team does not have to traverse through the airport or go through TSA security checkpoints.
It remains unclear how the Mercury are traveling now in the wake of the Dallas incident.
