Brittney Griner is creating a new normal, for herself and the WNBA

PHOENIX – Brittney Griner embarked on a four-day itinerary that would disrupt everyone’s circadian rhythm.

First there was the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington, where she was decked out that Saturday night in a tight black suit. President Biden pointed to her in the audience and said, “Boy, I can hardly wait to see you back on the field.”

Soon she was rushing to catch a flight and landed in Phoenix at 4 a.m. for the start of WNBA training camp with the Mercury. Then she hurried back east to New York for her first Met Gala. She wore a sleek brown suit and her wife, Cherelle Griner, wore a strapless white dress, both Calvin Klein custom outfits. They mingled with celebrities that night, but Brittney had to be back in Phoenix Tuesday afternoon for more basketball and, she had hoped, a nap.

The scintillating events, time zone hopping, and overall spectacle were overwhelming, but also perhaps came as something of a relief to Brittney Griner, who was trapped in Russia for nearly 10 months and returned to the United States in December as a new symbol of hope. Entangled in a geopolitical confrontation between Washington and Moscow, Griner drew attention not only to herself and the plight of other foreign prisoners, but also to the financial differences faced by women in sports that brought her to Russia in the first place. had brought.

On Friday, Griner returns to court for her first official WNBA game in 579 days. The competition is not the same now, partly because of her. The issues her detention highlighted are not new and are unlikely to be resolved easily. But she has sparked a powerful fan base and athletes who are both eager to welcome her home and use this moment to help drive change with her.

“We’ve wanted change for a long time, but now we’re really starting to demand it,” said Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier. “We’re just getting a little more impatient with that and realizing it’s an issue we don’t have the money to address yet, but we insist that we really, really quickly have the resources to be treated like the athletes that we are. ”

Why Brittney Griner was in Russia

Russian customs officers detained Griner at an airport near Moscow in February 2022 after finding vape cartridges containing hash oil in her luggage as she returned to play for UMMC Yekaterinburg, a professional team that allegedly paid her at least $1 million. have paid. She was convicted on drug charges and sentenced to nine years in a penal colony, but was released in December in a prisoner exchange for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer. The US State Department said she was wrongly detained.

The WNBA, now in its 27th season, has long seen dozens of players go abroad in the offseason in search of a higher salary, though the league has tried to offer them additional ways to make money in the United States. . The maximum salary in the WNBA is about $230,000, and was half that just a few years ago. Top players like Griner, a seven-time All-Star center, can command hundreds of thousands more from international teams. Many people were unaware of this dynamic until Griner’s detention, expressing their shock and frustration on social media and television shows.

“As much as I’d love to pay my light bill for the love of the game, I can’t,” Griner said at her first press conference since being released last month.

That reports the Associated Press 67 of the league’s 144 players were still playing internationally this off-season, an indication of the strong appeal of the opportunity to generate additional income. But in light of Griner’s detention and the war in Ukraine, players are avoiding the historically lucrative Russian organizations for teams in countries like Italy and Turkey. About 90 players played internationally five years ago.

Collier, 26, who has played for international teams in the WNBA off-season, said younger players gain important experience abroad. But she said she doubts she would play abroad again after Griner’s experience and because she wants to spend more time with her daughter, who turns 1 next Thursday.

‘This is how you build family names’

WNBA officials have attributed players’ modest salaries to historically modest — and perhaps meager — earnings and media coverage. Many WNBA players have become accustomed to entering the league with less media fanfare and sometimes playing to much smaller audiences than they did in college.

“I was part of it when I was in college and it was the hottest ticket in the country,” said Mercury guard Diana Taurasi, who played at UConn before becoming the WNBA’s leading scorer. She continued, “How do we make the country’s hottest ticket for the best basketball players in the world in the WNBA? As far as I’m concerned, that only happens in women’s sports, where adolescents get more attention than adults.”

Griner, who joined the Mercury in 2013, has been a star since she became known for her dunking at Baylor. At her first press conference since returning, Griner implored the unusual wave of reporters to come cover games during the season as well.

“The league is a league that needs exposure,” said Candy Lee, a journalism and integrated marketing communications professor at Northwestern. She added: “The league can benefit from this. The Mercury can take advantage of it.”

The surge in WNBA interest due to Griner has coincided with broader momentum for women’s sports in recent years. Last month’s NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship broke records with an average of 9.9 million viewers, according to ESPN.

WNBA teams will play a record 40 regular season games this year, and the league signed a multi-year deal with Scripps to broadcast Friday night games on network ION. Griner’s first two regular season games, Friday in Los Angeles and Sunday in Phoenix against Chicago, will be televised nationally by ESPN. Viewership during the 2022 regular season increased 16 percent more than the previous year, according to the league, making it the most-watched season in 14 years.

Watch the NBA playoffs and you’re likely to see a WNBA player, such as Candace Parker of the Las Vegas Aces or Arike Ogunbowale of the Dallas Wings, prominently featured in a commercial. Cougar recently announced the second signature shoe for the Liberty’s Breanna Stewart. Griner, who became the first openly gay athlete to sign with Nike in 2014, will remain with the brand, a spokesperson confirmed, but the company did not answer questions about whether it plans to release her this season.

A few weeks before Griner was detained, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced that the league had raised $75 million from investors that she planned to use for marketing and revamping the league’s business model.

Collegiate stars like Louisiana State’s Angel Reese, UConn’s Paige Bueckers, and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark are set to join the league in the coming years, with their dynamic games, name recognition, and national television exposure.

“That’s why we put so much marketing dollars into some of our star players,” said Engelbert. She added: “That’s how you build household names.”

The travel debate

Concerns over Griner’s safety while traveling since her detention have contributed to the fiery debate over travel in the WNBA

Unlike in the NBA or many top men’s and women’s teams, WNBA players fly to games on commercial airlines. It’s long been a pain point for players, who’ve had to sleep in airport delays or rush to games. This year, it’s widely believed that Griner will have to travel privately, though neither the Mercury nor the WNBA have disclosed her plans.

“Would definitely like to make all those flights private,” Griner said. “That would be nice. Not just for me and my team, but for the whole league. We all deserve it. We work so hard. We do so much and it would be nice if we finally get to that point.”

The WNBA has said it cannot afford the bill of more than $20 million per season for charter flights, even though some owners may be willing to provide them for their own teams. Charter flights are prohibited in the collective bargaining agreement between team owners and the players’ union as an unfair competitive advantage. The WNBA fined the Liberty $500,000 for secretly using charter flights to travel to some games during the 2021 season.

In April, the league announced it would have charter flights for teams playing on consecutive days during the regular season and for all playoff games. The WNBA has previously made exceptions in similar situations.

“We’re going to cut this out as we continue to build this model,” Engelbert said. “Because once you do it, you essentially have to do it forever, so we want to make sure we don’t jeopardize the financial viability of the league.”

On Thursday, the WNBA players’ union announced a deal with Priority Pass to give players access to airport lounges, which can offer dining, spa treatments and sleeping arrangements. Nneka Ogwumike, the Los Angeles star forward who is president of the players’ union, said in a statement that she hoped other “partners” would see the deal as a “call to action.”

In a statement, Terri Jackson, the union’s executive director, called the deal a “significant step in the right direction”.

‘She influences the world’

Vince Kozar, the president of the Mercury, described an ominous cloud over the franchise at every practice, media session and game without Griner last season. Short video clips that surfaced of her in Russia showed her handcuffed or caged. The day Griner was sentenced, Mercury players got together and cried – then got to play a game. “You were carrying that weight of uncertainty and fear,” Kozar said.

It finally, suddenly, broke up when Griner was released in December. Kozar didn’t expect Griner to immediately announce whether she would be playing in the WNBA again. But when she returned to the United States, she said she would play.

Griner was arguably the most connected WNBA player last season. Players from all over the league sent her letters, their only way to communicate with her. In letters to Kozar, Griner did not so much ask about the organization and its course of events as inform him about it.

“It was just a reminder that basketball was one of the things that had been taken from her, this thing of how she affects the world that’s central to her identity, which so many of her relationships are built around,” Kozar said.

Griner will lead the league in hugs this season. She scribbled autographs and posed for selfies in the tunnel of a preseason game against the Sparks in Phoenix last week. It was her first action since she got back. A modest crowd cheered louder than it seemed capable of during Griner’s pregame introduction. Mercury coach Vanessa Nygaard said shivers ran down her spine.

Griner towered over everyone else on the field, securing her first bucket after a quick turnaround a minute into the first quarter. Okay, here we go, Griner thought to himself. There had been so much unfamiliar to her lately. Jet setting for a living? That’s not her, she said with a laugh. But that first shot, she thought, felt familiar.