After protesting during the national anthem and enduring imprisonment in Russia, Team USA star Brittney Griner says wearing the red, white, and blue will mean “everything.”
The 2024 Games in Paris will not be Griner’s first trip to the Olympics. In fact, she’s already a two-time gold medalist. However, a lot has happened since the last time Griner wore her country’s colors. In 2022, Griner was sentenced to nine months in prison after Russian authorities caught her traveling with vape cartridges containing hash oil.
The case made headlines worldwide, and it wasn’t until the U.S. government agreed to exchange notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for Griner. With that experience fresh in her mind, Griner tells the Associated Press that representing the U.S. means something different this time.
“It means everything to me, honestly,” Griner said. “For me to now have the honor to wear it again and potentially win gold is icing on the cake for everything.”
That quote reads oddly to anyone who remembers Griner’s solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 and her comments urging the WNBA not to even play the national anthem before their games.
“I think we should take that much of a stand,” Griner told The Arizona Republic in July 2020.
Fast-forward a few years and a stint in a Russian jail, and the WNBA star’s tune changed substantially after hearing the anthem for the first time at a game.
“It’s like when you go for the Olympics, you’re sitting there, about to get gold put on your neck, the flags are going up, and the anthem is playing, it just hits different,” she said after hearing the anthem for the first time since returning to the States,” Griner said.
To those who criticize Griner for kneeling for the anthem and arguing against its playing, she said everyone makes “mistakes.”
“Everyone has made a mistake before,” Griner said. “The unpatriotic thing that blows my mind because, one, my dad fought for this country, ’68, ’69, Vietnam Marines and law enforcement for 30 plus years. Dad was my hero. I wanted to be a cop. I didn’t want to play basketball growing up, I wanted to be a cop and go into the military, actually. And doesn’t it make me more American that I’m demonstrating a protest? That’s my right as an American, so for me to be called un-American, I was blown away at that.”
Team USA is set to play its first game of group play on July 29.
