2023-04-27 23:10:33
The WNBA player Brittney Grinerin her first press conference after returning to the US after being imprisoned in Russia, assured this Thursday that will continue to fight for Americans in prison abroad.
“I was aware of the effort and everything that was happening (to bring me back), of the #WeAreBG campaign (#SomosBG, by its initials). Just knowing and being aware of that (…) made me feel a little more comfortable, made me hopewhich is a really hard thing to have, a really dangerous thing because when it doesn’t work it’s devastating,” he reflected.
“To all those who are unjustly detained around the world, stay strong, keep fighting, don’t give up (…). Keep pushing because we are not going to stop fighting, we are not going to stop raising awareness about all those who stayed back,” he added.
Arrested in February 2022 at a Russian airport, Griner was sentenced in August to nine years in prison for drug possession and smuggling after being arrested for carrying cartridges with hashish oil to vape when she was going to take a plane.
US authorities announced in December an agreement with Russia to free her in exchange for the arms dealer Víktor But.
“It’s a little different than a basketball press conference.. There’s a lot of media here today…” he joked to the excitement generated by this event at the Footprint Center in Phoenix five months after returning home.
The player reiterated her thanks to the US president, Joe Biden, to the media, to the WNBA and the Phoenix Mercury, to his wife and to all those who worked so that she could return.
Grin, that could not help tears with the first questionsaid that going through “hard times” was not something new for her.
“You are going to face adversities throughout your life. And this was quite a big one,” he said, pointing out that, as in his sports career, he tried to “bow his head and move on.”
The Mercury center also spoke about her situation, now back in the US, while other US prisoners such as journalist Evan Gershkovich y ex-serviceman Paul Whelan are still behind bars in Russia, and he reflected, when asked by a journalist, whether he felt any kind of “guilt” for it.
“It’s hard, it’s hard. I come from a military family and I have that ‘leave no one behind’ mentality. It hurts because no one should be in those conditions, without a doubt,” he said.
“I hope we all continue to raise awareness and fight to bring everyone back”indicated.
Griner also said that when she “lost hope” in her months incarcerated in Russia, seeing photos of her family allowed her to regain her faith in being able to return to the United States.
“You don’t understand how good a letter from your family or from people you don’t even know feels. It lets you know that you have not been forgotten and it is very easy to feel forgotten.“, he explained.
Back to the courts
Griner is already in the preseason -and “with great desire”- of the Mercury, with whom he conquered the ring of champions in 2014,.
However, he admitted that it has been “exhaustive” to recover the physical form after so many months without exercising to compete again in the WNBA.
Likewise, Griner regretted that many players have to play abroad in the months that there is no WNBA because salaries in the American league are very low (the maximum salary according to the agreement for 2022 was $228,094).
“I will never play abroad again unless it’s to represent my country in the Olympic Games,” he said.
“But I will say this: the whole reason so many of us go away is the pay gap. A lot of us go to earn income to help our families,” she said.
As a comparison, Stephen Curry (Golden State Warriors) is the highest paid this season in the NBA with 48 million dollars.
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