Brittney Griner has returned to the WNBA with a new perspective.
According to a report from Fox News, Brittney Griner has a new-found appreciation for the National Anthem after being detained in a Russian prison for nearly 10 months.
Griner had previously said she wouldn’t stand for the anthem before games.
“You have the right to protest, the right to able to speak out, question, challenge and do all these things,” Griner said, according to ESPN. “What I went through and everything, it just means a little bit more to me now. So I want to be able to stand. I was literally in a cage [in Russia] and could not stand the way I wanted to.
“Just being able to hear my national anthem, see my flag, I definitely want to stand. Now everybody that will not stand or not come out, I totally support them 100 percent. That’s our right, as an American in this great country.”
“I appreciate everything a little bit more, all of the small moments, like, ‘Oh, I’m so tired I don’t want to go to practice today,’ that has changed, honestly,” she said. “Tomorrow is not guaranteed, you don’t know what it’s going to look like. I feel a lot older somehow, too.”
Griner’s agent wrote an op-ed for Time explaining further why she would be standing.
“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.”
Griner scored 18 points in her return.
Britney Griner talking on the podium discusses about whether it felt differently when the National Anthem hit.#ValleyTogether#WNBA pic.twitter.com/G0TUMJUPG4
— Burn City Sports (@BurnCitySports) May 13, 2023
'MEANS A LITTLE MORE': WNBA star Brittney Griner speaks out about her national anthem stance during her first night back on the court since being jailed in Russia. https://t.co/aUIYcxFTLE pic.twitter.com/nf9KHtVygg
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 21, 2023
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