While Brittney Griner is still being held in a Russian prison cell, the Associated Press reported that she has apparently been receiving hundreds of emails from WNBA players and friends. The missives are arriving to an email account her agent set up to be able to communicate with her. Naturally, the process is not without its complications.
Here's How It Functions
The emails are printed out and delivered sporadically in bunches to Griner by her lawyers after they’re vetted by Russian prison officials. Needless to say, Griner does not have access to an email account. But the six-foot-nine Phoenix Mercury center responds the old-fashioned way: by hand, written on paper. Her lawyers then snap a picture of the communication. If Griner doesn’t have any paper on hand, she dictates her responses to the lawyers and they send them on.
Prison Pen Pals – An Old Concept In A New Age
Los Angeles Sparks forward Amanda Zahui B. said she never expected to hear back from Griner when she sent an email to the two-time Olympic gold medalist several months ago, wrote the AP.
“When she responded to my second letter it blew me away. I was like she responded!! In my third letter, I was like ‘hey best friend, we are officially best friends now.’”
After Zahui B. received her first response from Griner she vowed to keep up the correspondence, which she did. So have many other players.
“We just don’t want her to think she’s forgotten,” Liberty center Stefanie Dolson said.
Griner was detained at an airport near Moscow on Feb. 17 after authorities allegedly found a vape cartridge with cannabis oil in her luggage when she was entering the country to continue her seventh season with Russia’s UMMC Ekaterinburg women's team.
Griner’s agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas said the letters have been a way for her to stay connected to her WNBA family.
Some offer words of encouragement and prayers for Griner’s release and say they are thinking about her. Others send Sudoku puzzles or more personal notes.
“She jokes in her letters. I don’t know how she does it with what she’s going through. She’s an amazing soul,” Zahui B. said. “She brings light in a situation like this. I don’t think a lot of people could manage to do that.”
