Brittney Griner on playing for Team USA after kneeling during anthem, Russian imprisonment: ‘Means everything’

Brittney Griner is no stranger to wearing Team USA across her basketball jersey in the Olympics, but a more reflective player heads to Paris considering what she’s been through since the 2020 Toyko Games.

Griner, a two-time gold medalist for the U.S., was in Russian prison two years ago after being sentenced to nine years in jail for drug possession and smuggling after the Federal Customs Service found her traveling with vape cartridges containing less than a gram of hash oil, which is illegal in Russia.

Griner would later be set free in a high-profile prisoner exchange that sent Viktor Bout, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” who was serving a 25-year federal sentence on charges of conspiracy to kill American citizens and officials, among others.

Before playing in the WNBA All-Star Game, where Griner, a star with the league’s Phoenix Mercury, spoke about how she gets chills wearing her Team USA jersey now.

“It means everything to me honestly,” Griner said, via The Associated Press. “For me to now have the honor to wear it again and potentially win gold is icing on the cake for everything.”

This tune wasn’t sung by Griner always, as she previously suggested the WNBA shouldn’t play the national anthem before its games back in 2020 when social unrest was at the forefront during “Black Lives Matter” protests.

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“I think we should take that much of a stand,” Griner, who also knelt for the national anthem, told The Arizona Republic in July 2020.

However, when Griner returned home from Russia, where she went to supplement her WNBA income by playing internationally, she said her appreciation for hearing the anthem was different.

“It’s like when you go for the Olympics, you’re sitting there, about to get gold put on your neck, the flags are going up, and the anthem is playing, it just hits different,” she said after hearing the anthem for the first time since returning to the States.

Griner also recently clapped back at critics who called her un-American for kneeling during the anthem, saying she was “blown away” by their words during an appearance on “The View.”

“Everyone has made a mistake before,” Griner said, responding to people who deemed her “careless.” “The unpatriotic thing, that blows my mind, because, one, my dad fought for this country, ’68, ’69, Vietnam Marines and law enforcement for 30 plus years. Dad was my hero. I wanted to be a cop. I didn’t want to play basketball growing up, I wanted to be a cop and go into the military, actually. And doesn’t it make me more American that I’m demonstrating a protest? That’s my right as an American, so for me to be called un-American, I was blown away at that.”

Brittney Griner on playing for Team USA after kneeling during anthem, Russian imprisonment: ‘Means everything’