Brittney Griner is escorted from the courtroom in Khimki Russia on Thu Aug 4, 2022. The Kremlin says that all talks about a prisoner exchange must be done in secret. (AP News file photo)

Brittney Griner and Bad Diplomacy

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-González

She traveled to Russia to play professional basketball because as a big star of the WNBA Phoenix Mercury, Brittney Griner needed to supplement her income. The average WNBA salary is under $200,000 per season and there are only 14 players as of this last season that was making $228,094, those were Diana Taurasi, Jewell Loyd, and Breanna Stewart (According to Yahoo finance).

Brittney Griner signed a 3-year / $664,544 contract with the Phoenix Mercury, including an annual average salary of $221,515. In 2022, Griner will earn a base salary of $227,900, while carrying a cap hit of $227,900.

It’s understandable she traveled to Russia to play there because the WNBA (unlike the NBA) doesn’t have a great impact domestically and internationally, with low attendance and low interest as well as media coverage.

The NBA is the “mother of all basketball leagues” as they get huge revenues in the US and internationally, especially in China. Their players’ salaries are in the millions of dollars. For American women, it is totally the opposite.

This July, American women’s basketball star Brittney Griner was convicted of deliberately smuggling drugs into Russia and sentenced to nine years of jail time in a case that has raised concerns she is being used as a political pawn in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

This is what Russia has done for decades, from the days they were under total communist control and called the Soviet Union, to this day under Vladimir Putin.

99.9% of the time these hostage crises are negotiated in secret between the two governments involved and everybody learns about it after the release of the hostage(s) Not this time, the United States made it public to the whole world, that they would release a Russia arms trafficker who is also known as “The Merchant of Death”.

In return, Russia would set free Griner and a US Marine incarcerated accused of spying. Many experts in hostage situations point to the fact that the US played directly into the hands of Putin’s Russia’s government, who are using her as a pawn in the middle of a war they unleashed on Ukraine.

To complicate the matter, the US has been sending weapons and billions of dollars in support of Ukraine against Russia. In other words, Russia and the USA are not the best of “friends” at this time.

Because Russia’s Putin specialized in these types of international issues (he was a KGB agent during the Soviet Union days) he will continue to play the game of leverage as he will ask for others in return if they make a deal.

Unfortunately that Brittany Griner has found herself in the middle of this international conflict, but in the first place she should have been smart enough not to take any type of drugs to Russia. It is easy to find out about the laws of another country when you travel abroad.

That is what the US State Department is for. You can easily find information about traveling to other countries and what you need to do, like their laws.

Professional athletes tend to be arrogant sometimes and do not bother to check on those things when they travel abroad by themselves.

If they travel with a team, that probably would not have happened, because professional teams have cleared all the traveling in advance and know who is traveling, and have control of their athletes, because they are their employees.

Everything has been very quiet, no news, in this case, is bad news for Brittney Griner, because all the reports by Amnesty International shows that Russia is one of those countries where foreign prisoners in jail for breaking their laws are treated and kept in not the best of conditions.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com