The medal ceremony for women’s basketball at the Paris Olympics — again crowing the United States — is something many people saw coming, even after a one-point win. Team USA was golden for an eighth straight time.
The image we didn’t see coming showed tears streaking down the face of the team’s tallest player: Brittney Griner.
The emotion leaked out of her not so much as a flood, but as a steady stream.
So much has happened.
At that moment, Griner was not just the all-everything center for Team USA and the Phoenix Mercury. She was at the center of the heart of a nation to which she was grateful, and a nation more willing to embrace her in return.
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Her unifying arc in a divided United States makes her No. 1 on the 2024 Outsports Power 100 list.
That moment represented what had been a growing evolution for her and the die-hard fans who have followed her from Nimitz High School in Houston, to Baylor, to the WNBA. As well as the casual fans now swept up in the emerging moment, and those with castigation in their voices since Feb. 17, 2022.
Perceptions of Brittney Griner, not reality.
The Brittney Griner who was detained at Sheremetyevo Airport outside of Moscow on that winter day in 2022 — and later imprisoned in Russia — had been perceived in a much different light. Before that day, Griner was defined too often by what she was thought to be and not by who she actually was.
To those on the outside, she was an embodiment of Wilt Chamberlain’s axiom about being the giant on the floor: “Nobody roots for Goliath.”
She came onto the radar with a viral YouTube dunk in high school. She was characterized as “too tall” and “too unlike the norm.”
We marveled at her inside game and her blocked shots, yet we kept her at arm’s length as the outsider, or worse.
A freshman-year incident at Baylor, when she punched a Texas Tech player who had been physical with her, colored many views of Griner as a college player. Never mind her being a fun-loving, long-boarding, college kid, even at 6-foot-9.
The court of social media was harsh, even in 2009.
We never really celebrated her accolades, including her dominant junior year at Baylor in 2012, where she was clearly the class of the nation in a 40-0 championship season.
The cackles and slights seemed endless when her college career ended in a stunning upset in the Sweet 16 the next year.
As she was putting Baylor in the spotlight, then-head coach Kim Mulkey was telling her to dim her special light, because that light shined queer. That was some of the reason why a player who should have had a statue built immediately had to wait a decade for her number to hang in the rafters in Waco.
Griner exuded a quiet, determined confidence. She is who she is, from the dapper suit she wore at the 2013 WNBA Draft, to her matter-of-fact discussion of her sexuality.
“I really couldn’t give an answer on why that’s so different,” Griner told SI.com in 2013. “Being one that’s out, it’s just being who you are. Again, like I said, just be who you are.
“Don’t worry about what other people are going to say, because they’re always going to say something, but, if you’re just true to yourself, let that shine through. Don’t hide who you really are.”
She never hid, and neither did her teammate and bestie for the Phoenix Mercury, Diana Taurasi.
Brittney Griner takes a stand
That love and admiration seemed in short supply four years ago.
Never mind the WNBA title she helped the Mercury win in 2014, the Olympic gold medals to follow or the flowing list of accolades she has earned as perhaps the most dominant inside presence in the league’s history. All of that was forgotten by some people when she didn’t kneel for the national anthem.
She didn’t shy away from explaining why.
She was seen by some as an arrogant, justified target for people’s homophobia and misogyny.
The footage of her detainment by Russian authorities wasn’t seen as harrowing by her detractors, but perhaps comeuppance as comedy.
“We Are BG”
“On one wall there was a rim, five feet up, but I had zero interest in basketball. It made me think of what I’d lost and where I was.” — From “Coming Home” by Brittney Griner with Michelle Burford.
This is the reality of Griner’s nearly 10-month imprisonment. The details were largely unknown until she talked about it through her book and a barrage of interviews in May. It’s a story of beds that didn’t fit and a cold prison camp, plus the psychological stress of wondering if she’d ever be free.
The tears she shed to Robin Roberts when talking about the possibility of 10 years away from her loving wife, Cherelle.
There was also what Griner couldn’t see from the prison cell.
She couldn’t see the filled arenas of people loudly calling for her release in growing numbers across 2022, or the furious activity of diplomats negotiating her way out.
She couldn’t see the furious push of a spouse wanting her home, but perhaps she could feel it. Many of us felt it, too.
We cheered on Dec. 8, 2022, when Griner landed in Texas. We shed a happy tear seeing an excited wife receiving the news.
We didn’t see Brittney Griner as Goliath.
We actually saw her.
‘O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave‘
As the final notes of “The Star Spangled Banner” rang across Bercy Arena in Paris after Team USA won the women’s basketball Olympic gold medal, Griner had a hand firmly on her heart. When the anthem ended, she wiped away flowing tears. Tears shed out of gratitude and release.
“It means so much to me, my family. I didn’t think I would be here,” she said after Team USA’s triumph. “And the be here and win gold for my country, representing when my country fought for me so hard for me to even be standing here. This gold medal is going to hold a special place amongst the other two.”
Griner was free and bravely worked through the pain and trauma of what she went through as she returned to all the things she loved and thought she would lose as she sat in her cell.
In making her return to form, she would also lay her story out to the public including her views on her country in spite of those who would doubt her. One of those doubters accosted her in an airport in 2023, but the vast majority supported her, even many of those who may have seen her in a harsh light.
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