The Patriot Post® · Brittney Griner's Reality Check

There she was, standing tall in more ways than one.

Sure enough, Brittney Griner, that six-foot, eight-inch trifecta of leftist grievance — gay, black, female — was out there on the court, just before tip-off for the Women’s National Basketball Association regular season opener, doing something that she’d once sworn she wouldn’t do: standing for the national anthem.

Griner appears to have had a change of heart about her home country — at least for the time being. An overseas incarceration will often do that to you. Prison time is lonely time, reflection time, reality-check time.

Having recently spent 10 months as the guest of the Russian criminal-justice prisoner-exchange system, Griner was ultimately released last December in a disastrous straight-up swap for The Merchant of Death, Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, while two other Americans — Paul Whelan, an Iraq war Marine veteran who has been imprisoned in Russia on completely bogus spying charges since 2018, and Marc Fogel, a Pennsylvania teacher — were left behind in Russian custody.

Back in 2020, before her arrest in Russia on a drug charge, Griner had this to say about “The Star-Spangled Banner”:

I honestly feel we should not play the national anthem during our season. I think we should take that much of a stand. I don’t mean that in any disrespect to our country. My dad was in Vietnam and a law officer for 30 years. I wanted to be a cop before basketball. I do have pride for my country. I’m going to protest regardless. I’m not going to be out there for the national anthem. … It will be all season long, I’ll not be out there.

It was something of a confused and contradictory rant, to be sure, but Griner’s refusal to even appear on court for the national anthem spoke volumes. And so, her appearance there on Friday night during the playing of the anthem should also speak volumes — as should her reasons for doing so:

You have the right to protest, the right to able to speak out, question, challenge and do all these things. 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.

This great country? That’s quite a turnabout.

The question is: Are we to take it seriously? Griner is human like the rest of us, and we humans are highly resistant to change when it comes to our personality traits and our deeply held convictions.

Frankly, sadly, there’s a cynical side to us that wonders whether these words were Griner’s or those of her publicist. Was this merely a marketing ploy, an attempt to keep from chasing away the WNBA’s relative handful of fans? Or, on an even more mercenary level, an attempt to cash in on some personal endorsement deals that might not otherwise avail themselves?

Only time will tell. But here’s hoping she proves us wrong.