Social Media Post Promotes False Claims About Brittney Griner

WNBA star Brittney Griner has made plenty of headlines off the court during her playing career. In 2020, she drew the ire of many Americans for saying the national anthem should not be played before professional sports games. In 2022, she spent nine months wrongfully detained in Russia for having a cannabis vaporizer in her luggage. 

But recent reports that she is leaving the United States are false. Griner has repeatedly expressed gratitude toward her home country for securing her release, and she wept during the national anthem after winning gold as a member of the U.S. women’s basketball team in this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris.

The false and fictitious claims come from the Basketball Daily News Facebook account. 

“Unable to bear the pressure, Brittney Griner decided to leave the US and form a Russian women’s basketball team: ‘You lost a TALENT and added a STRONG OPPONENT,’” the account claimed on August 16. 

“Brittney Griner Announces Departure from the United States: ‘If You Don’t Respect Me, You’ll Lose Your TALENT’” the account posted on August 28. 

None of the quotes attributed to Griner have appeared in any other media outlet, and they run contrary to other statements she has made since her release from a Russian prison in December 2022. Since her return to the U.S., Griner has left the U.S. only once—this summer—to represent the U.S. women’s basketball team in the 2024 Paris Olympic games. 

“I’m happy, I’m in a great place,” Griner said in July ahead of this summer’s Olympics. “I’m representing my country, the country that fought for me to come back. I’m gonna represent it well.”

In February 2022, Griner was arrested on drug smuggling charges by Russian customs authorities at the Sheremetyevo airport outside of Moscow after vape cartridges containing cannabis oil—which she had purchased legally in the U.S. with a medicinal marijuana license—were found in her luggage. Despite the U.S. State Department labeling Griner as “wrongfully detained,” a Russian court sentenced her in August 2022 to nine-and-a-half years in prison—a ruling U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “further compounds the injustice of her wrongful detention” and accused Russia of “using individuals as political pawns.” 

The Biden administration secured her release in December 2022 in a prisoner swap, exchanging her for Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms dealer. Bout was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2011 for conspiring to traffick illegal weapons to a Colombian terrorist group. 

At the time of her arrest, Griner had been traveling to Russia to play for the country’s UMMC Ekaterinburg basketball team during the WNBA offseason, something she had done regularly since 2014. Several months after she returned to the U.S., Griner said she would decline all other international tournaments, aside from the Olympics. “I’m never going overseas to play again unless I represent my country at the Olympics,” she said in April 2023. “If I make that team, that’ll be the only time I leave U.S. soil and that’ll be to represent the USA.” 

In fact, Griner—who returned to the WNBA less than a year after her release from Russian imprisonment—has said her wrongful detainment gave her newfound appreciation for the U.S. “One good thing about this country is you have the right to protest,” Griner said in May 2023. “What I went through with everything—it just means a little bit more to me now … Just being able to hear my national anthem, see my flag, I definitely want to stand.”

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