Detained in Putin’s jails, the American basketball champion has become a bargaining chip between the Kremlin and Washington.
Calling his daughter Brittney in the America of the warmonger and very reactionary George Bush father is like naming his son Kevin in the cushy France of François Mitterrand. This does not give her many advantages… In her autobiography published in 2014 and entitled “In My Skin” (“In my skin”), the basketball player Brittney Griner, 31 years old today, admits having “slept for a long time, mortified, thinking very hard: as long as I wake up normal tomorrow morning”.
Black-skinned, ill at ease in her giantess’ body, discovering herself as a lesbian in pre-adolescence, she wondered what the good Lord could have done to her to be born that way. So different. Over the years, in a story of “comeback kid” as the United States adores them, Brittney Griner has managed, beyond sarcasm and prejudice, to become a paragon of tolerance and resilience for thousands of young Americans. . By giving up his first name for the nickname BG (his initials, but also those of Big Girl). And above all by establishing herself as one of the most illustrious basketball players in history: 2.06 meters, a wingspan of 2.22 meters, two Olympic titles (2016, 2021) and the ability, rare in women’s basketball, to perform dunks: the art of scoring by throwing the ball into the hoop, with one or two hands, well above the circle.
With her 2.06 meters, she is one of the few players to succeed “dunks”
This year, her destiny has swung into an underworld like John le Carré: here she is hostage to the shadow games of espionage where beings are only pawns in a game of chess played by States. Haggard, with a waxy complexion, sunken cheeks and dull eyes, forearms, all marred with tattoos, held together by thick handcuffs, BG received, sounded, on August 4, the verdict of the Khimki court: nine years in a penitentiary and a fine of 1 million rubles, approximately 16,000 euros. His crime: entering Russia in February in possession of two vape cartridges containing hashish oil. She pleaded guilty, arguing that she used the substance legally in the United States to manage pain.
“I made an honest mistake and I hope your decision doesn’t end my life here,” she said in a frail voice. His judges had nothing to square. To the hole! Because Brittney Griner is especially wrong to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Star of the WNBA, the American women’s professional basketball league, where salaries are capped at 200,000 euros per year, she had been hiding in Yekaterinburg since 2014. There, in Siberia, an oligarch, zinc baron, has built an armada of women’s basketball. Danger Price: $1 million half-season. “This is how. We have to go to a communist country to be paid like capitalists”, ironically Diana Taurasi, US basketball legend (five Olympic titles from 2004 to 2021), teammate of Griner in Phoenix, figure of the LGBTQIA + cause and who is a little lost in political developments in Russia.
At the Khimki court, July 26.
© ItarTass/Bestimage
Arrived just after the invasion of Ukraine, Brittney Griner is a godsend for the Kremlin. And a valuable bargaining chip. Joe Biden has already offered to trade the basketball player and Paul Whelan, an ex-marine sentenced to sixteen years in prison for espionage, for Viktor Bout. Born in Tajikistan, this former Soviet fighter pilot inspired the character of Nicolas Cage in the film “Lord of War” in 2005. A real bastard, this mustachioed man is serving a twenty-five-year prison sentence in the United States for having attempted to sell surface-to-air missiles to a terrorist group that targeted Americans. He is above all one of the greatest arms smugglers of the century. He supplied bombs, AK-47s and machine guns to warlords in Africa and the Middle East, until his arrest in Thailand in 2008 and extradition to the United States in 2010.
Cherelle, his wife, mounted an intense campaign for his release
All this will probably not be settled, as in the good old days, on a pale early morning, on a bridge in Berlin or at a border post in the Kuril Islands. Eventually, Brittney will reunite with her wife, Cherelle, in Phoenix. The reunion scene to the sound of “A Milli” by Lil Wayne, their favorite song, will bring America to tears. But not sure that BG emerges intact from these one hundred and sixty days in hell. Even if his life has been all pitfalls, pitfalls and victories against the bad winds.
Daughter of a sheriff, Vietnam veteran, and a housewife, young Brittney spent her childhood in Houston, Texas. His extraordinary physique only earned him jeers and harassment. The boys berate her, pinch her breasts to check if she is a man. In her autobiography, she testifies: “All my life, I have been called a “freak” [monstre]. I like my body to be unique. I hate labels. I am told that I have to choose between feminine and masculine. I want to be both, because that’s who I am.”
When she reveals her homosexuality to her father, he kicks her out (they have since reconciled). She takes refuge with her coach who tells her: “As long as you play at this level and plant baskets, you do what you want with your life.” At the same time, in 2007, a YouTube video shows her chaining the famous dunks. She is sensational. “I said to myself: this is the future of basketball, remembers legend Diana Taurasi. She’s going to steal our job.”
Nicknamed “the merchant of death”, Viktor Bout is claimed by the Kremlin, which thus recalls his links with the arms trafficker. Here in 2010, when he was extradited from Thailand to the United States.
© Reuters
In NCAA, the North American university championship, BG, registered at the University of Baylor (Texas), explodes all records. Champion in 2012 with 40 wins and zero losses. Never seen. She was selected a year later in first position during the “draft” by the Mercury of Phoenix, a franchise of the women’s league. His reputation is such that Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA, invites him to a summer camp with his team. “Soon a woman in the NBA? » headlines the daily « L’Équipe » in 2013. The case will not be done. But a legend was born.
On the court, BG proves to be showwoman. She harangues, provokes, defends like a lioness, punctures the opposing lines, captures a maximum of rebounds. To counter it, you don’t need one opponent but two. The Brittney Griner phenomenon wears a 54 and only wears pants and men’s T-shirts for Nike, of which she is the first gay muse, which earns her 1 million dollars a year. During her initial season in the WNBA, she came close to suspension for refusing to comply with compulsory makeup during the gala presentation of the “rookies”, the new kids. “I don’t need this shit,” she says.
Born in an atypical body, she asserts her abnormality. His private life, tumultuous, hits the headlines. She marries first to Glory Johnson, another basketball player. The couple accuse each other of domestic violence and then separate. Her “bad girl” look and her multiple tattoos make her a kind of feminine Dennis Rodman (the star of the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s). BG has engraved on the skin two intertwined feminine symbols, a mark of its pride in being “queer”, and, in the small of the back, two skulls and a slogan: “Laugh now. Cry later.” Provocative, annoyed by the gossip of social networks accusing her of being a man, she likes to post photos of her very stylized, half-naked. All that was before.
Provocative showwoman, she takes revenge for the time when she was called a monster
His place of detention is kept secret, but Brittney Griner is now rotting in a jail in Novoye Grishino, one hour from Red Square, in a former orphanage converted into a prison. In her dungeon, according to the Tass agency, she would read the Bible, “The Demons” by Dostoyevsky, Kafka, James Patterson and the Memoirs of Keith Richards. Of her, once haughty and conquering, we saw during brief public hearings only a frightened face, an awkward and emaciated silhouette. On July 4, Independence Day, she wrote to Joe Biden begging him not to forget her: “I’m terrified to stay here forever.”
Evil tongues ensure that she got herself into this trap. Going to Putin’s country in a context of extreme tension between Russia and the United States, what an absurd idea… “There are two reasons for that”, protested in the American press Lauren Neaves, a former player converted into an agent. “The first is money. Players earn money there that they can’t get in the United States. The other is that the WNBA is a championship that lasts four and a half months. When basketball is your job, you don’t want to play a third of the year.”
Cherelle, his wife since 2019, has mounted an intense public campaign to expedite his release. American women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe is part of her support committee: an image posted on her Instagram account shows her wearing a blazer with the initials BG and a flower embroidered on the right lapel. Rappers like 50 Cent, Angie Martinez or IDK, personalities like Justin Bieber or Mia Farrow are calling for his extradition. But, today, everything is played on another level. The Russians are aware that with Griner they hold a prize of war of the first choice. It’s time for negotiations between the great masters of treason and lies. According to John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council: “I don’t think it’s helpful for Brittney that we talk publicly about the status of the talks.”
A year ago, on August 8, 2021, Brittney Griner allowed the United States to conquer their seventh consecutive Olympic title in Tokyo. It was, for her, the second. With 30 points, the dreadlocked Gulliver, author of a capital performance in the final, seemed to be at her zenith. His life is now negotiated against a merchant of death to whom Moscow is trying to add a handful of assassins and blackmailers.