BG

By all accounts, Brittney Griner is a gentle soul. Quite a feat, considering the challenges being a six-foot nine-inch female who weighs two-hundred five pounds and is openly gay present. (Not to mention that unless your name is Giannis Antetokounmpo or Joel Embiid, she can probably kick your ass to the dark side of the moon in a game of basketball.)

As players in the WNBA often do, she had traveled to Europe to play a second season following her 2021 WNBA Finals appearance with the Phoenix Mercury. It is unknown if she had successfully smuggled cannabis into Russia previously, but this time her attempt was unsuccessful.

I don't pretend to know Russia's drug laws or precisely what is meant by “a small amount” of cannabis, but I'm guessing that even in Vladimir Putin's Russia, this is not the equivalent of a first-degree felony. And yet Griner has been treated nearly like a serial killer.

Detained in February and tried in August, she was sentenced to nine-years in prison. Her legal team filed for an appeal and were denied in October. Now comes word that she has been sent to a penal colony, an extraordinarily harsh punishment in light of her crime.

At first glance, it's hard not to wonder if she is being treated more severely owing to her status as a celebrity. After all, this is Putin-land, where cases like this proceed in whatever fashion will guarantee maximum exposure.

A commonly held belief is that Griner is a political pawn, kept in storage until such a point she can be used as a bargaining chip in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine. And if this is the case, does it make sense to let a valuable prisoner languish in such deprived conditions?

This is supposition, of course. For all I know, Putin lost a butt-load on the Mercury in the 2021 WNBA Finals and this is his preferred manner of extracting revenge. But given the dire reality of Putin's twisted autocracy, the probability remains that this woman has become a pawn in his latest political drama.

All that is left is for the U.S. and Russia to determine her worth before the inevitable negotiations begin.

Another chapter in the book of human cruelty.