Griner ‘hits slam dunk as she plays basketball for first time’ in US

Brittney Griner has reportedly taken to the basketball court for the first time in nearly 10 months following her return to the United States. The WNBA star was back on U.S. soil on Friday morning after she was released from a Russian prison in a high-profile exchange for a notorious arms dealer.

It hasn’t taken her long to get back to her sport as she picked up a basketball for the first time since the prisoner swap on Sunday, reports ESPN. Griner is located at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio and carried out a light workout, her agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas told the outlet.

It’s claimed the 32-year-old wore a Title IX t-shirt, Phoenix Suns shorts and Chuck Taylor sneakers as she scored a slam dunk in one of her first moves of the casual practice. Griner belongs to the Phoenix franchise, representing the Mercury team before being arrested in Russia in February on drug charges. Her future with the team remains up in the air after 10 months in prison. Pictured: Griner signing documents to leave the penal colony in Russia.

‘If she wants to play, it will be for her to share. She has the holidays to rest and decide what’s next without any pressure,’ Colas told ESPN. ‘She’s doing really, really well. She seems to have endured this in pretty incredible ways.’ Griner also reportedly had her hair cut by the San Antonio Spurs’ barber Sunday morning after being forced to cut her dreads in Russia.

The WNBA star was swapped for ‘Merchant of Death’ Viktor Bout , 55 — who was serving a 25-year sentence in a U.S. prison — ending what President Joe Biden called months of ‘hell’ for her and her wife. Griner was seen getting off a plane that landed Friday at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas, after flying from the UAE where the prisoner trade took place (pictured). She spent her flight home to the U.S. talking with crew members and others on her flight.

‘She was in very, very good spirits when she got off the plane and appeared to be, obviously, in good health,’ White House spokesman John Kirby told MSNBC in an interview citing U.S. officials on the ground in San Antonio, Texas, where she arrived just before dawn. The swap deal secured the release of the most prominent American detained abroad and achieved a top goal for President Joe Biden. Griner is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, Baylor University All-American and Phoenix Mercury pro basketball star.  

Her status as an openly gay Black woman, locked up in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LBGTQ community, injected racial, gender and social dynamics into her legal saga and brought unprecedented attention to the population of wrongful detainees in Russia. The athlete, who also played pro basketball in Russia, was arrested at an airport there in February after Russian authorities said she was carrying vape canisters with cannabis oil. Before her conviction, the U.S. State Department declared Griner to be ‘wrongfully detained’ — a charge that Russia has sharply rejected.

Following Griner’s arrest at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in February, she pleaded guilty in July but still faced trial because admitting guilt in Russia’s judicial system does not automatically end a case. She acknowledged in court that she possessed canisters with cannabis oil but said she had no criminal intent and she accidentally packed them. Her defense team presented written statements that she had been prescribed cannabis to treat pain.

On Thursday, the White House released footage of the emotional moment President Biden told Griner’s wife Cherelle that the WNBA star was finally coming home, before the pair hugged in the Oval Office (pictured). President Biden announced Griner’s release early Thursday in an address to the nation at the White House. ‘She is safe. She is on a plane. She is on her way home,’ he said. He said he had spoken to her and she was in ‘good spirits’ after suffering ‘needless trauma’ at the hands of the Russian state.

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