2023-04-27 19:45:00
Phoenix (AP) – The American basketball player Brittney Griner never wants to appear once more for a foreign team outside the USA following her ten-month imprisonment in Russia. More than four months following her return, the 32-year-old spoke to more than 100 people at the first press conference since her release.
“I will never play abroad once more unless I represent my country at the Olympics,” Griner said of her WNBA team Phoenix Mercury. “If I make the team, it would be the only time I leave American soil.”
Griner also spoke regarding her resilience through her experiences as a professional athlete. “Hard times are no stranger to me,” she said. «You will face adversity in life. That was a pretty big one. I was just relying on my hard work to get through it.” Also present at the press conference were her wife, Cherelle, and Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs.
Griner was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in early February 2022 and later sentenced to nine years in prison for illegal drug possession and attempted smuggling. At that time she played for the team UMMC Yekaterinburg in the Urals. At the beginning of December last year, she was released as part of a prisoner exchange for the Russian arms dealer Viktor But.
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