BRITTNEY GRINER WANTED TO FIRE PUNCHES, HARDLY A GOOD POST-RUSSIA LOOK
Losing her temper during a WNBA game, Griner must have made Vladimir Putin laugh as she clenched her fists and tried to attack Rickea Jackson, which should raise questions about her public stability
She sat for interviews beside the American flag. She wrote a memoir titled, “Coming Home.” She served her country in Paris and won another Olympic gold medal. She met with President Biden and shared a long, emotional hug, commenting, “He kept saying how big of a fan he was of mine and how much he loved the way I play basketball.”
Would he feel the same way today?
Should any American appreciate how Brittney Griner, with her fists clenched and prepared to pound away at Rickea Jackson, became unglued in a heated altercation Tuesday night? Whatever happened during a WNBA game should resemble peace and love compared to her life-and-death treatment in Russia, where she was arrested and detained for nearly 10 months. It was stunning to see her throw a right elbow toward Jackson’s face, then engage in conflict about to erupt into fisticuffs before she was restrained by coaches, teammates and officials.
Think Vladimir Putin was laughing in Moscow? None of us should be anything but horrified, knowing Griner didn’t have to chase Jackson with intentions that almost required police. For minutes, she continued to scream and curse from the Phoenix Mercury bench in ways that offended courtside fans at Crypto.com Arena. This was Brittney Griner, America’s hero? She meant enough to relinquish a notorious Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, in a swap at the Abu Dhabi airport. Why was she behaving like a maniac who once was arrested on domestic abuse charges?
“Everything happened so fast,” said Curt Miller, the Los Angeles Sparks coach.
Some will say they understand her stress. I say the anger never should surface at a basketball game, and if Griner can’t control it, she might need therapy before she hurts others when she was seven inches taller and 30 pounds heavier than Jackson. She was the one who foolishly stuffed vape cartridges containing cannabis in her luggage. Who cares what Jackson, an overlooked rookie and pre-game fashionista, had to say on the court? What happens if Caitlin Clark or Angel Reese make remarks she doesn’t like?
We are trying to enjoy the thunderwave of women’s basketball. Griner isn’t helping. The Mercury, who should be celebrating the possible end of Diana Taurasi’s career, don’t need more flareups as the postseason begin. Before Russia, in 2019, Griner was suspended three games after a near-brawl. Will the league look at her technical-foul total, at four before the game, and push her to an automatic one-game suspension at seven? By now, we thought she would have moved on in life.
Maybe she never will. But as we try to celebrate Griner’s athletic ability, she should unclench her fists and stop screaming. There must be a better way of “Coming Home.”
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.