Brittney Griner Is Leaving The United States: ‘If You Don’t Respect Me, You’ll Lose Your TALENT

“I have no plans on going out of the country right now,” says Griner, 33. “Even coming to New York [from Phoenix] was hard. I kind of broke the first time I came back [to New York] because it’s the last place I was before I left.” (Griner had a layover at John F. Kennedy airport in Feb. 2022 before flying to Moscow, where she was arrested.)

“In the hotel, I was just pacing, kind of frantic. It’s better now — way better now.”

Before her imprisonment “But pro women hoopers often work year-round. We earn about 250 times less than NBA players and have a hard cap on our salaries. In the WNBA that year I made around $220,000. Overseas, I earned a million plus. That pay gap is why I was in Russia in the first place.”

Tired of missing home, holidays Griner had already decided — before her Feb. 2, 2022 arrest at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for possession of two vape pens containing a combined 0.7 grams of hash oil — that it would be her final season with UMMC Ekaterinburg of the Russian Premier League. But since her return in December 2022, the idea of international travel has been a source of anxiety.“My wife and I [used to enjoy going] down to Mexico for a bit,” says Griner, “But now I’m just like, ‘Nah, I can’t do it.’ We can go to a beach in America. There’s plenty of beaches here. There were countries I wanted to visit before, but [not] now.”