Last fall, as she played in her second WNBA Finals, Brittney Griner did what she does so easily, which is shift the topic away from her sport. “I’m not your typical basketball player,” she said, not defensively or defiantly, but just because she knows it’s true. So during a week when her Mercury battled the Sky for the championship, Griner was sharing her plans for when she stops playing basketball.
“I want to go to Sturgis,” she said. “I love motorcycles, so I want to ride my bike from my garage to Sturgis, like, the real way.”
On Thursday, one day before the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was scheduled to begin in South Dakota, Griner was sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison. The rally is surely not top of mind for her right now. But it’s fair to assume she misses the open road, and all that it represents.
