She is without question the most dominant female basketball player of her generation, the uncommon 6ft 9in center with an 88in wingspan who dunks and blocks shots with spite. In the past decade Brittney Griner ignited Baylor’s undefeated college national championship run, helped USA Basketball to a pair of Olympic gold medals, and lifted the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury to a league title just one year after being drafted first overall. And now the Houston native’s glittering career could come to an end inside a Russian jail cell.
On Saturday came word that the 31-year-old Griner had been detained at an airport near Moscow after customs agents said they caught her with a hoard of vape cartridges containing hashish oil. Even more distressing than this news breaking some three weeks after Griner had landed in Sheremetyevo from New York was the 10-year maximum prison sentence that Russia reserves for the crime she is alleged to have committed. On Sunday the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, offered oblique support for Griner, saying “we of course stand ready to provide every possible assistance.” The Texas Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee called for her immediate release. Meanwhile, a former top Pentagon official feared Griner could become a “high-profile hostage” and be used as a bargaining chip.
