'Brittney Griner, imprisoned in Russia, was honored at the All-Star Weekend.' | Maya Goldberg-Safir More here
, “We really don’t talk about our feelings. . . . That’s something that hurts us as a society. It’s something that’s going to change with more athletes speaking up about it.” This is the Brittney Griner women’s basketball fans had come to know: driven by the will not only to succeed on the court, but to help others.
This is the person who has been missing from the sport for over 150 days. July 10 was a gorgeous summer day in Chicago. For die-hard WNBA fans and Sky season ticket holders like Rochelle Huber and Taylor Roberts of Uptown, “it was like a cherry on top after winning the championship last year.” Huber and Roberts celebrated All-Star Weekend alongside the players, splurging on a suite at the JW Marriott across from Wintrust. “I don’t think it stopped being a party all weekend—for us, or for the players,” Huber said. By 10:30 AM on Sunday morning, the couple had joined thousands of “ready to go” fans outside the arena. They streamed through the doors a full 90 minutes before tip-off, filling the stands and buying out the merch booths. “It was completely packed. It was completely packed,” Roberts said. By noon, there were nearly 10,000 people in attendance. Inside Wintrust, the lights dimmed and the top stars in the league—including four players from the World Champion Chicago Sky—stood as all-stars under the bright lights.But suddenly, there she was. Griner’s 6’9’’ frame, magnified on the Jumbotron. Fans, including Huber and Roberts, were ready. “BG is always at the forefront,” said Huber. “It’s the one issue that unites everyone.” Around them, in the stands, scores of people wore T-shirts, many of them homemade, with the slogan “We Are BG.” Hundreds of others wore “Free Brittney Griner Now” pins. Signs insisting “Bring Brittney Home” waved in the air. And the WNBA’s message even reached through the walls of prison. Days after the game, at her last court hearing on July 15, Griner brought with her a printed-out photograph of her teammates, all wearing number 42.in the courtroom, where she sits during trial proceedings. According to the James W. Foley Foundation, an organization that advocates for American hostages held abroad, there are more than 60 Americans wrongfully detained overseas. In wrongful detainment cases, it’s considered lucky when someone comes home within months, and it’s typical for such imprisonment to stretch for years. This leaves the families of detainees—hundreds of people—fighting for their loved one’s freedom over unimaginably long periods of time. Now, the wrongful detainment community also includes thousands of players, coaches, and fans from the WNBA. But there’s a striking difference between how Griner is recognized by her own community and how she has been portrayed in mainstream media. Before her detainment in February, Griner was relatively unknown to the general public, despite her accomplishments. The lack of coverage by mainstream media outlets of her superstar career made her initial arrest seem to many as a kind of baffling blip in the news cycle. But for those who knew Griner, the arrest was shocking, unprecedented, and overwhelming. Initially, her family and teammates followed the State Department’s advice to remain quiet, which is typical in these cases. Making noise, the government warned, could only worsen her situation, provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin’s temper, and turn Griner into a political pawn. At the same time, experts like Gissou Nia, director of the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project, sounded the alarm. “Is Brittney Griner a Russian hostage?” she wrote for NBC News on April 12. “What we know about her detention doesn’t support the theory that this was just a routine arrest.” Nia cited several hallmarks of a wrongful detainment in her case: the denial of consular access, a basic right for any foreign national detained; the strikingly timed invasion of Ukraine one week after her arrest; the lack of physical evidence despite the severity of the charge. And yet, across major U.S. outlets, Griner’s story remained tucked into short backpage paragraphs, even once Griner was officially classified as “wrongfully detained” in May.Experts say that in the case of wrongful detainment, the legal system is often weaponized and used as a kind of Trojan horse for state-sponsored hostage-taking. Many have warned that Griner faces a “kangaroo court” where the outcome is puppeteered from above. Wrongful detainment advocates such as Jonathan Franks are familiar with this pattern. Franks, a crisis management consultant who has worked closely on several wrongful detainment cases, recently helped to free former Marine Trevor Reed, who was imprisoned in Russia for over two years. “Wrongful detentions are never resolved judicially,” Franks says. “They’re resolved politically. . . . This is not a court and it’s not going to conduct a trial. It’s going to conduct a PR and propaganda exercise for the [Russian] regime.” But the logic of a “trial” has a bewitching quality. And as Griner’s case turns into a media spectacle, many U.S. outlets are simply reprinting the Russian government’s narrative with headlines like
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