Brittney Griner done with international basketball career — except Olympics –

WNBA star Brittney Griner is finished playing internationally after spending most of 2022 in the Russian prison system for possessing a small amount of cannabis oil.

The 32-year-old Phoenix Mercury center said Thursday the one exception to that rule would be to win another gold medal to put alongside the ones she took home from the 2016 and 2020 Olympic games.

“That would be the only time I’ll leave the US soil and that’s just to represent the USA,” she said during a Thursday press conference.

Griner was released from captivity in December after being apprehended in a Moscow airport in February 2022. The 6-foot-9-inch Texas native is a two-time WNBA scoring champion. Like many women’s basketball players, Griner subsidized her income by playing abroad — until now.

The Mercury open their preseason in Seattle against the Seattle Storm on May 9. They’ll be back home to play the L.A. Sparks for a May 12 matchup, where fans will surely be thrilled to celebrate the return of their star player. She was signed to a new one-year contract in February.

“We missed BG every day that she was gone and, while basketball was not our primary concern, her presence on the floor, in our locker room, around our organization, and within our community was greatly missed,” Mercury General Manager Jim Pitman said after inking that deal.

ESPN reported that deal is worth $165,000.

Griner got teary eyed at the start of Thursday’s press conference in Arizona, where she was asked how she could be ready to play basketball again after her terrible ordeal.

“I believe in me,’ Griner replied. “I believe in what I can do.”

She was sentenced to nine years in prison, but was brought home through a prisoner swap with Russia. Griner said last month she’s working on a memoir about her ten months in detention.

Thursday’s presser was Griner’s first Q&A since rejoining the WNBA, but she made her first New York City appearance of 2023 at Rev. Al Sharpton’s annual convention in Manhattan last month. There, she thanked fans for their support and stressed the importance of bringing home every American imprisoned on foreign soil.

“I want to continue to fight to bring home every American detained overseas,” she said

Late last month, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was apprehended in Moscow on seemingly dubious espionage charges. Griner has called for his release.

“No one should be in those conditions,” she said Thursday.