Highlights

• Brittney Griner smashed NCAA records with unparalleled talent, setting the stage for a groundbreaking career in basketball.
• The WNBA legend faced personal challenges, including a high-profile divorce and legal troubles, but overcame setbacks to shine on the court.
• Griner's net worth and salary disparity in the WNBA highlight the struggles faced by female athletes compared to their male counterparts in professional sports.

When a towering and strong Brittney Griner burst onto the college basketball scene at Baylor University in Waco, Texas at the age of 19, she caused havoc in the sport.

Then-freshman Brittney Griner – with the help of her astounding height of nearly seven feet (6'8" to be exact) – managed to block 223 shots, which is the all-time single-season record in the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) division.

On top of that, she holds the NCAA record for slam dunks, having dunked 52 times in 32 games.

After earning that record, the world began to notice a novel talent in women's basketball — a young woman with prodigious abilities, and basketball pundits set about predicting how far she could take her talents.

Brittney Griner went far beyond even those lofty expectations.

In her four-year college basketball career, she blocked 748 shots, which set the all-time record — surpassing Louella Tomlinson’s 663 blocked shots.

After her college graduation, basketball fans were eagerly awaiting another commencement – that of Griner's vaunted skills to the WNBA (Women's National Basketball Association) – and even major media outlets were excited about this new, Texas-born basketball sensation.

Forbes was excited about her dunking ability, the New York Times was banking on Brittney to change perceptions of Women's basketball, and the influential BleacherReport.com argued that Griner could be a contender for the NBA itself, citing chatter among basketball movers and shakers like Mark Cuban:

"if Griner is to succeed in the NBA, it has to be with the right owner. The Dallas Mavericks' Mark Cuban says he would consider drafting Griner and the Baylor superstar indicated she was game. It would be wonderful to see Griner in camp with the Mavs next year [2014]. I'd also love to see her in the NBA Summer League."

As expected in the WNBA draft, the Phoenix Mercury selected her with the first overall pick, ensuring other teams couldn't snatch her coveted talent away from them.

One of the greatest journeys of the WNBA was about to begin, and in its course, Brittney Griner thoroughly shocked fans with her impeccable talent and well-earned fortune.

However, Griner's charted course was not one of smooth sailing; it included dangerous turns which beggared belief, and setbacks that could break anyone.

Let's look at Brittney Griner's net worth, her extraordinary achievements, and the unexpected twists in her career and life to date.

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Brittney Griner's WNBA Odyssey Begins

A "one inch taller" Brittney Griner started her WNBA career as the fourth tallest athlete in WNBA history; her height officially given as 6 feet 9 inches (or 2.06 meters).

Her first year was a warm-up season for Griner, but despite not being at her best, she equaled the dunk record and averaged an impressive 3.0 blocks in the season.

For the 2014 season, Brittney brought the storm; she was a massive force, along with Diana Taurasi and Candice Dupree, guiding the Phoenix Mercury to win the finals and setting a record for most wins in a regular season.

That year, Brittney Griner broke a record previously held by the tallest player in the history of women's basketball, surpassing the late Margo Dydek’s record for most blocks in a game. (Dydek, who died in 2011, stood at 7 feet, 2 inches.)

Griner blocked eleven times in total, one more than Dydek; she also holds the record for the highest number of shots blocked in a season at 129.

Nine-time WNBA All-Star player Brittney Griner was the first athlete in WNBA history to dunk in a playoff game.

Everything was going well; Brittney Griner was constantly reaching new heights. Then a new controversy emerged.

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Brittney Griner Navigates Personal Challenges

At the advent of her career, Brittney Griner openly identified as a lesbian, in a manner the New York Times described as remarkably matter-of-fact:

"One of the most dominant basketball players in recent memory came out as gay [in April 2013], casually mentioning the fact in an interview as if it were an afterthought.

"The news media and the sports world seemed to treat it as such, too, with little mention of the star’s sexuality showing up on social media or on message boards, and virtually no analysis of what the revelation meant for tolerance in society as a whole."

In a lengthy article about Griner's public coming out, the Times explained:

"The aftermath of the former Baylor star Brittney Griner’s revelation in several interviews [in April 2013] was muted, to say the least ... in fact, she appeared to refer to her coming out in the past tense, as though it had happened before — giving a casual feeling to the entire episode."

Griner soon became a prominent voice in the LGBTQ+ community, and in 2017, she donated $5,000 to a Phoenix-area LGBTQ youth center for which she had then-recently volunteered, after it was damaged in a suspected arson attack.

Brittney Griner regularly uses her celebrity to speak out against injustices towards the LGBTQ community.

Griner not only found professional sports stardom, but also an apparent life partner — she got engaged to Tulsa Shock forward Glory Johnson. 2014 was a golden year for Brittney Griner, and she was on-track to continue her lucky streak.

But three months before the 2015 WNBA season, she and then-fiancée Glory Johnson were arrested on charges of assault and disorderly behavior following an altercation at their then-newly purchased home in Phoenix.

Both NBA stars sustained minor injuries, and an ever-stoic Griner said of the incident:

"It turned into a fight. Broke up. We kept arguing, mouthing back and forth, clashed again, separated us, clashed again, separated us and here we are now."

Surprisingly, just one month later, the pair married — but the WNBA didn't show mercy due to their arrests, and banned them both from playing for seven matches.

Johnson was quoted in a New York Times wedding section profile of their nuptials, saying:

I’m not a lesbian. But Brittney is different.

In spite of the ban, Griner surpassed expectations, averaging a whopping four blocks per game — and she again broke Margo Dydek's record for the highest shot block average in a season.

On the WNBA court, Griner was at the top of her game. But her marriage was already in shambles after just a month, publicly crumbling not long after Glory Johnson announced she would give birth to twin girls through IVF.

The very next day, Griner filed for an annulment of her marriage to Johnson, asserting that Johnson had fraudulently coerced her to wed.

In the filing, Griner maintained that she "felt pressured into marriage under duress by (Johnson's) threatening statements."

Glory Johnson denied all the allegations leveled by her estranged then-wife.

Griner filed for a divorce (finalized in 2016), but the court ordered her to pay child support to Johnson; Johnson initially sought $20,000 a month, but the sum ordered was a more manageable $2,665.81 monthly.

Luckily, the WNBA legend found love again, meeting and later marrying Cherelle Watson.

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Brittney Griner And The Strangest Controversy In Sports

During the off-season, the talented Brittney Griner remained in demand to play overseas, as she played in China for two seasons, in 2013 and 2014.

Griner's career in the off-season would later come to issue in a massive and unexpected way, and news outlets held that female athletes were forced to play overseas because they were universally underpaid.

From 2015 to 2022, she played for the Russian Basketball Premiere League team, UMMC Ekaterinburg.

On the eventful day of February 17th 2002, Brittney Griner was excited to greet her Russian teammates again — but at Sheremetyevo International Airport, security detained her.

According to airport security, Brittney Griner was carrying under a gram of hash oil in vaporized cartridges.

In court, Griner pled guilty, but said she had no intention of breaking the law because she had been prescribed medicinal cannabis, which is legal in Arizona.

The maximum punishment for possessing less than seven grams of hash oil in Russia is 15 days. The entire world was shocked when the court sentenced Griner to nine years on charges of smuggling drugs, and Reason.com explained:

"In Russia, possessing less than seven grams of marijuana (about a quarter of an ounce) is an administrative offense punishable by fines. Possessing seven grams or more triggers criminal penalties, which can include up to two years of 'corrective labor.'

"But because Griner [stood accused of bringing] marijuana into Russia, she was charged with smuggling a 'significant amount' of 'narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances,' which carries a sentence of five to [ten] years."

The arrest and subsequent sentencing occurred at what the public would later discover was a geopolitically sensitive juncture, making Griner's situation unusually fraught.

Unbeknownst to all, Russia's globally controversial invasion of Ukraine was imminent, and the real reason behind Griner's detention would soon become clear.

In fact, one week after her arrest, on February 24th 2022, Russia attacked Ukraine, and Griner's arrest appeared to be less a coincidence and more a chess move on the global stage.

It appeared to many that Brittney Griner was an innocent bystander caught between two Cold War rivals (Russia and the United States), and that Russia's intent was to take advantage of the situation, leveraging the star athlete as a pawn.

Most understood Griner to be a "high profile hostage" in Russia. Even the U.S. State Department got involved and protested – repeatedly – asserting Brittney was wrongly detained in a blunt statement dated August 4th 2022 and attributed to Secretary Of State Antony Blinken:

"Today’s conviction and sentencing by a Russian court of U.S. citizen Brittney Griner to nine years in prison further compounds the injustice of her wrongful detention. This step puts a spotlight on our significant concerns with Russia’s legal system and the Russian government’s use of wrongful detentions to advance its own agenda, using individuals as political pawns.

"Nothing about today’s decision changes our determination that Brittney Griner is wrongfully detained, and we will continue working to bring Brittney and fellow wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Paul Whelan home. This is an absolute priority of mine and the Department’s.

"We will also continue to press for fair and transparent treatment for all U.S. citizen detainees in Russia.

"Russia, and any country engaging in wrongful detention, represents a threat to the safety of everyone traveling, working, and living abroad.  The United States opposes this practice everywhere."

On November 9th 2022, the State Department issued another press release, reiterating that Griner's detention was political, and her trial a "sham":

"Following a sham trial and the unjust sentencing of Brittney Griner, Moscow is transferring her from a prison in Moscow to a remote penal colony. It is another injustice layered on her ongoing unjust and wrongful detention."

As it turned out, those concerns and suspicions would soon be unquestionably validated, when Russia insisted upon the release of convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for the safe return of Brittney Griner to American shores.

Viktor Bout is a notorious arms dealer, convicted of killing many people, and infamously nicknamed the "Merchant Of Death."

After extensive negotiations, Griner was released on December 8th 2022, almost ten months after her arrest, and footage of the "prisoner swap" captured the moment she was freed:

On that date, the State Department issued a third press release, confirming that Griner was finally en route to the US.

After this incident, Brittney Griner vowed that she would never play for an overseas team again.

Griner is clearly an extremely strong individual, as this ordeal would shatter anyone — and Russia's prisons are notoriously horrific.

Due to ten months of detention, Brittney Griner's entire 2022 season was taken from her — but she came back strong in the 2023 season, and was picked as a starter in the 2023 WNBA All-Star Game.

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Updated, April 2024: On April 23rd, ABC News aired an exclusive interview with Brittney Griner – largely focusing on her "her monthslong confinement" in Russia –and published an article about her sit-down with anchor Robin Roberts.

According to the published piece, Griner's detention in Russia was "harrowing." The outlet excerpted a portion of the interview, explaining:

"After her sentencing, Griner was transferred to a penal colony in the Russian region of Mordovia.

"'The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper. That was the moment where I just felt less than a human,' Griner told Roberts as she reflected on her time in prison ...

"'I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through,' she said."

During the interview, Griner disclosed that she penned a memoir, Coming Home, which is slated for release on May 7th.

Brittney Griner's Net Worth: A Strong Rebound And Path To Prosperity

It is frustrating to discover that while the top male NBA players can earn $30 million to $50 million per season, their high-caliber, superstar female counterparts receive nowhere near the same level of compensation.

How vast is the difference? WNBA players earn anywhere from $200,000 to $240,000 per season.

The highest-paid player in the NBA is Stephen Curry, earning around $52 million, while the highest-paid WNBA player, Jackie Young, gets only $252,000 (one quarter of one million) per season.

Griner's detention drew attention to the fact that talented WNBA players often need to play overseas to make ends meet as a professional athlete.

Brittney Griner herself said: "The whole reason a lot of us go over[seas] is the pay gap."

And further, Griner noted that she would be able to continue earning $1 million for overseas play, if this unfortunate incident hadn't happened.

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Brittney Griner's Net Worth And Salary

Brittney Griner's net worth and salary details reflect not only her earnings, but also a bizarre reality inflicted upon the best and brightest female professional athletes.

Considering what she earned in the supposedly preeminent women's basketball league over many years, Griner earned significantly more than that in just four months of overseas, off-season league play.

According to reports, Brittney Griner has only earned $1.5 million in her ten-year WNBA career. However, through her overseas basketball career and brand endorsements, she managed to amass a decent estimated fortune of $5 million.

She was the first openly gay female player to sign a $1 million endorsement contract with Nike; the basketball star also collaborated with major brands like T-Mobile and BodyArmor.

Brittney Griner's life is a reminder that talent and hard work often pay off — but her ordeal in Russia is another, less pleasant reminder, that even the most talented and hardworking people can be thrown off course by the whims of fate.

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