As WNBA star Brittney Griner remains detained in a Russian jail, one of her teammates has revealed that players were asked to downplay her arrest.
Griner was arrested after authorities said claimed they found cannabis oil in her luggage. The player is potentially facing years in a Russian prison.
“So what we were told, and again, this is all sort of passed along through hearsay,” Basketball Hall of Famer Lisa Leslie said On her “I Am Athlete” podcast. “What we were told was to not make a big fuss about it so they could not use her as a pawn, so to speak, in this situation in the war. So to make it like it’s not that important, or don’t make it like ‘Free Brittney’ and we start this campaign and it becomes something they can use.”
“That’s what we were told. And I don’t want to say who told us. I don’t want to say who said that, but it’s been kind of spreading through the women’s basketball world.”
Leslie was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.
She continued: “It’s heartbreaking for all of us. That’s the feelings of it. You want to do more, and think, should we all use our social media platform and get behind it or not? Nobody really [knows]. This is the first time we’re in this situation, and we don’t know what to do.”
Last week, an official from the U.S. embassy in Moscow said Griner was “in good condition.”
Griner’s WNBA community remains highly concerned.
“I talk with Dawn Staley and people that I’m close with. We talk about it daily. We’re just like ‘Dang what’s she doing now? Do you think they cut off her hair? Does she have a bed long enough to fit in?’,” Leslie asked. “We’ve had full on conversations about it, and I’m like her parents got to be sick. What’s the right thing to do about it?”
