Brittney Griner to stand for national anthem ahead of WNBA season opener

Brittney Griner will stand for the playing of the national anthem ahead of her WNBA and Phoenix Mercury return Friday, her agent announced.

Griner, who spent 10 months in Russian detainment on drug charges before being granted her release in a one-on-one prisoner swap for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, stood for the national anthem alongside her teammates during a preseason tilt last week.

She’ll do so again ahead of the 11 p.m. ET tip-off between the Mercury and Los Angeles Sparks.

“Last year, most WNBA teams chose to remain in their locker rooms during the national anthem, in a gesture of unified protest against the incongruity between the values the anthem signifies and the realities for Black people in America,” Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, wrote in an op-ed in TIME. “This year, as so much remains unchanged, some teams or players may do the same. Others may sit or kneel. Still others, including Brittney Griner, plan to stand up — physically for the anthem itself and symbolically for the rights of their peers to make themselves heard and express dissent loudly and boldly, and in accordance with the proudest traditions of this country, however they see fit.”

Brittney Griner standing tall for ‘American freedoms’

Kagawa Colas described the conditions of which Griner endured during her prison sentence in Russia before saying that the 32-year-old will stand tall for “American freedoms.” Amid the George Floyd protests in 2020, Griner said she would not come out for the playing of the national anthem.

“Having been put in a literal cage, too small for her frame, stripped of her essential American freedoms, and deprived of even her most basic rights during a sham trial and unjust sentencing, Brittney, supported by many other players, will make a statement this WNBA season by standing tall for those uniquely American freedoms — the most important of which being the absolute and inviolable and constitutionally protected freedom to stand, sit, kneel, praise, protest, and otherwise make your voice heard,” Kagawa Colas wrote.

Brittney Griner ready for WNBA return

Griner will return for a 10th season with the Mercury — the team which selected her first overall in the 2013 WNBA Draft. She last suited up for the Mercury in 2021, where she averaged 20.5 points and a career-high 9.5 rebounds per game. Griner led her team to the WNBA Finals, where the Chicago Sky ousted the Mercury in four games. She has been an All-Star in seven of her nine seasons, with career averages of 17.7 points, 7.6 rebounds and 2.8 blocks per game.

“I didn’t think I would be sitting here and playing basketball this quickly,” Griner said last Friday. “Coming back, I didn’t know how it was going to go, getting back into it. I’m not going to take a day for granted, but it was a lot to take it all in and it was good to get this one out of the way before we go out to LA.”