Natalie Achonwa was sleeping when news that the nightmare was finally over began coursing around the world, over the internet and onto her phone on Thursday.
“I woke up I woke up I had like 75 messages or more, so I knew something had happened,” the Minnesota Lynx veteran and Canadian national women’s basketball team captain me over the weekend from her home in Indianapolis. “So between the [WNBA] executive committee group chat that I’m in and between my family and friends sending me messages on social media and sharing the news I realized what it was. It was a joyous celebration to wake up to. Literally tears of joy. I couldn’t imagine a better Christmas or a better holiday celebration.”
The news was that Brittney Griner was coming home from a Russian penal colony.
For fans of the WNBA, where Griner has been a historic performer since joining the league as the No.1 overall pick in 2013 by the Phoenix Mercury – the year before Achonwa was taken ninth overall out of Notre Dame – or anyone else who had followed the saga of her imprisonment it was a happy surprise and a source of deep relief.
Griner had been imprisoned for 294 days after trace amount of cannabis oil was found in her luggage when she was arriving in Russia to play professional basketball during the WNBA off-season.
Under normal circumstances, a foreigner in a comparable situation might have been deported or detained for days or weeks pending a significant fine, but once Russian officials became aware of Griner’s status as a Team USA star and WNBA icon, she became a pawn in a vicious game political hardball in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Griner – who was convicted at trial, sentenced to nine years and had recently been transferred to a labour camp – was only going to be released in exchange for a Russian prisoner held in the United States. Late last week the swap was made – Griner in exchange for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, a notorious arms dealer who was serving a 25-year sentence in the US prison system.
For Achonwa, a nine-year WNBA veteran and part of the union’s executive along with the rest of Griner’s peers in the WNBA it was a joyous moment and the end of nearly 10 months of stress and uncertainty and also a triumph.
While the negotiations and decisions around her release were made at the highest levels of government and took on the outlines of a spy novel, complete with the respective prisoners literally being physically exchanged under cover of darkness on the tarmac of a military base in Abu Dhabi, the effort to keep Griner’s cause front-and-centre for months on end was driven by the WNBA as a whole.
The league’s stars made sure Griner’s detainment was kept top-of-mind through their public statements and social media; the commissioner of the WNBA met with US state department officials league had a logo featuring her No.42 jersey displayed on courts in every city all season.
“We weren’t in any way involved in the actual negotiation,” said Achonwa. “But being able to use our platform to be able to advocate for BG and all wrongfully detained Americans abroad, that’s what we do: We take social issues – and not only just with BG, but you can see in the work that we do across voting, across other social issues, we use our platform and when we come together, we’re unstoppable.
“… of course, it hit home being one of our 144 [players]and a colleague and friend in BG [that needed help], but when we stick together and when we move, it’s with intention and it’s with force and that’s how things get done.”
Griner is more than your average professional basketball player. The 6-foot-8 forward was one of the first WNBA stars to come to fame as an unabashedly proud LGBTQ athlete, this at a time when the league itself was still not clear on how hard to lean into that segment of its fanbase.
Her status made her a target in the crossfire of the never-ending US culture wars, it seemed, with voices on the conservative right suggesting, in essence, that Griner rescuing a prominent ‘out’ athlete and ‘drug offender’ – and a black female democrat who argued the American national anthem shouldn’t be played before WNBA games in the wake of George Floyd death’s by police and the subsequent nationwide protests shouldn’t necessarily be particularly high on the government’s agenda, or that exchanging a notorious arms dealer was too high a price to pay.
For Achonwa and the WNBA collective, it made keeping Griner cause at the forefront so important and keeping her personality and humanity there too. It wasn’t hard.
“I think people will want to remember the humanity in everybody,” says Achonwa. “I know everyone wants to put BG in this like basketball category, as this athlete. But we’re all so much bigger than that. And I think the biggest thing with BG is her joy; her smile is contagious, whether you’re playing against her or not. She’s such a caring person.”
Achonwa recalled a battle who got into while playing for Canada against Team USA that resulted in Griner having her took broken when Achonwa unintentionally hit her in the mouth. “I had to get stiches on my wrist, and she was so concerned about me and kept asking if I was okay, even though I had hit her,” says Achonwa.
Her play, politics and personality have made Griner a WNBA icon and a cultural touchstone.
“Remember first like coming to League and like, people were trying to make what a WNBA athlete looked like from the outside fit into this little box,” says Achonwa. “Even within the WNBA we are female athletes, black female athletes and LGBTQ+ female athletes. And BG kind of said ‘F’ this and helped others really be comfortable being themselves because she decided she was going to be who she really is, and I think it gave those coming after her and even those that came before her the courage and the strength to be who they are.
“And you could see that courage and integrity as she was going through this whole thing. You could see her on the plane coming back still smiling. And I think the strength to be who you are, regardless of circumstances is something admirable. And that’s who BG is.
“I’m just glad she’s home.”
