I call b.s. Does anyone believe the vice president when she says that as she travels around the world, one issue that comes up is interest in the WNBA? Yet, there she was, speaking to the Phoenix Mercury team in their locker room before Brittney Griner played her first game since her release from a Russian prison telling the women that malarkey.
Kamala Harris can’t be bothered to pop down to the southern border to check on how things are going but she had time to go to the Phoenix Mercury vs Los Angeles Sparks game on Friday night in Los Angeles. Brittney Griner and her wife had a private visit with Kamala and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff before Kamala addressed the whole team. It’s reported that she also spoke with the Sparks team, too. They posed for pictures with both teams.
Griner and her team lost to L.A. with a score of 94-71. She made six rebounds, four blocks, and 18 points during the game. That’s nothing to sneeze at but a loss by the team is anti-climatic, isn’t it? Isn’t she supposed to be the best WNBA player or something, and that’s why it was so urgent that she be released from Russian detention? Other Americans have served longer sentences and are still there but Griner got a prisoner swap deal and was released. She’s been given the red carpet (literally) treatment ever since. To be clear, I don’t want any American to be held hostage on trumped-up charges in a Russian prison but it seems to me that Griner received special treatment from the Biden administration in working for her release. YMMV.
When Kamala and Doug met with Brittney and her wife in a small room off the locker rooms, she told her how wonderful she was before the detention. Remember, Griner was a political activist who refused to honor the national anthem before games, for example. She was vocal in anti-America rhetoric. Kamala called it courageous.
“Even before all that happened, BG, you led with courage, and while it was happening, you showed such poise and dignity and grace,” Harris told Griner as they discussed her wrongful detention abroad.
Harris told Griner that she inspired so many because “learning that nothing is going to knock you down is good. That’s really good stuff.”
She pointed to Griner as a role model and example of overcoming overwhelming adversity.
“So you just do your thing,” Harris added.
Kamala’s speech in the locker room was, well, interesting, at a certain point. She wanted to compliment the team for supporting Griner during her imprisonment.
“You are some of the finest athletes in the world, and to do what you do every day shows that it is right to have ambition,” she said. “It is right to have aspirations. It is right to work hard. It is right to compete when you know you have put everything into it; when you have trained, when you have discipline, when you have intelligence, and when you have brilliance.”
She added, “It makes me so proud as Vice President of the United States to go around the world talking to folks about a variety of issues, and one of the subjects that does come up is the WNBA. [The world] is watching what you guys are doing, lifting up the excellence of the finest athletes in the world.”
I’m sure that Griner’s case made international news and that brought attention to the WNBA, but, come on. The world was watching what the Biden administration was doing to get Griner released, not particularly the WNBA in general. Kamala likely wanted the players to think they get international interest.
Biden and Harris have a bad habit of lying when there is no need to lie. They both just make things up as they speak.
Griner is writing a book on her experience. Maybe Kamala will host a book signing for her when the time comes.
“I arrived in Moscow to rejoin the UMMC Ekaterinburg basketball team and was immediately detained at the airport. That day was the beginning of an unfathomable period in my life which only now am I ready to share,” Griner wrote in a post on Instagram.
The WNBA posted a video of several Los Angeles Sparks players – Griner’s opponent on Friday – discussing the WNBA star n a positive light on Thursday.
“What I love about having BG back on the floor is that basketball is her safe space,” Sparks forward Chiney Ogwumike said in the video. “Growing up in Houston, Texas together alongside my sister, we followed her career closely, we supported each other, and just to have her back, it means the world to us.”
The WNBA union is singing the praises of the Biden administration for securing the release of Brittney. Union support is essential for Biden’s re-election efforts.
Long-time WNBA Union president and Sparks forward Nneka Ogwumike took the opportunity to thank Harris for working to secure Griner’s release. Harris played a crucial role in securing Griner’s return to the U.S. through efforts by the U.S. Department of State.
“What the Biden administration did to make that happen is really important,” Ogumike said to Harris. “It was not easy, but I just want to say thank you so much for everything you did for us to be able to play BG tonight.”
Russian imprisonment seems to have changed Griner when it comes to how she feels toward the United States. She will stand for the national anthem now, where she used to sit when it was played before. Her agent made that announcement. In July 2020 Griner declared the national anthem shouldn’t be played at games and that she would remain in the locker room while it was played. Now she and her teammates stand for it and she says the anthem “definitely hit different” after her time in a Russian prison. Funny how that happens.
Griner’s agent wrote an op-ed published in Time on Friday.
“Last year, most WNBA teams chose to remain in their locker rooms during the national anthem, in a gesture of unified protest against the incongruity between the values the anthem signifies and the realities for Black people in America,” Lindsay Kagawa Colas wrote. “This year, as so much remains unchanged, some teams or players may do the same. Others may sit or kneel. Still others, including Brittney Griner, plan to stand up — physically for the anthem itself and symbolically for the rights of their peers to make themselves heard and express dissent loudly and boldly, and in accordance with the proudest traditions of this country, however they see fit.”
Kagawa Colas explained that Griner will make a statement on “American freedoms” by standing for the anthem.
“Having been put in a literal cage, too small for her frame, stripped of her essential American freedoms, and deprived of even her most basic rights during a sham trial and unjust sentencing, Brittney, supported by many other players, will make a statement this WNBA season by standing tall for those uniquely American freedoms — the most important of which being the absolute and inviolable and constitutionally protected freedom to stand, sit, kneel, praise, protest, and otherwise make your voice heard,” Kagawa Colas continued.
Griner learned a hard lesson.
Read the full article here
