Brittney Griner’s WNBA Impact Is Clear As Fans Await Word from Russia

When Brittney Griner is on the basketball court, everyone knows. At 6-foot-9, she towers over most other players. She snatches rebounds over her opponents’ outstretched arms, and her teammates know the surest way to score: Deliver the ball to her.

Since the Phoenix Mercury drafted Griner No. 1 overall in 2013, she has become one of the most dominant players ever: a seven-time All-Star, a W.N.B.A. champion and a two-time Olympian with matching gold medals.

But now Griner, 31, has become entangled in a geopolitical quandary. Instead of preparing for the W.N.B.A. season that’s less than two months away, she is believed to be detained in Russia on what customs officials described as drug charges, with little word on her case or her well-being during the war in Ukraine.

“With all the problems with Russia and them attacking Ukraine, has Brittney become a political bargaining chip?” said Debbie Jackson, Griner’s high school basketball coach. “Is this part of politics? So much of it doesn’t make any sense to me that I find it hard to believe that this is really the true thing that happened.”

Griner was in Russia playing for a professional basketball league, a common off-season practice for W.N.B.A. players, who can earn salaries in overseas leagues well beyond what their American teams pay. The date and circumstances of Griner’s potential detention were not known, and the W.N.B.A. said all of its players except for Griner were out of the country by Saturday.

Griner is said to be facing up to 10 years in prison if convicted on the drug charges, based on accusations that she had vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The Russian authorities, who said Saturday that they had detained an American athlete on these drug charges, did not name Griner, but the Russian news agency Tass did.

On Monday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said she had seen reports about Griner but that federal privacy law prevented the U.S. government from discussing a person’s detention without their written consent. American officials have repeatedly accused Russia of detaining U.S. citizens on pretexts.

Representatives for Griner have declined to comment on Griner’s status beyond a statement that they were working to get her back to the United States. The uncertainty has caused an outpouring among fans and supporters of Griner, a groundbreaking player known for her unmatched blitz of dunks and her standing as one of the most prominent gay athletes.

A congresswoman in Houston, Griner’s hometown, has demanded her release. W.N.B.A. players have posted “Free Brittney” messages on Twitter.

“There are no words to express this pain,” Brittney’s wife, Cherelle Griner, wrote on Monday in an Instagram post addressed to Brittney. “I’m hurting, we’re hurting. We await the day to love on you as a family.”

‘Nobody can do what she can do’

Griner was a 5-foot-8 freshman on the volleyball team at Nimitz High School in Houston when Jackson approached her about playing basketball.

Griner initially laughed at the thought of trying out for a sport she’d never played and knew little about. But she quickly fell in love with it, Jackson said. It helped that she grew nearly a foot, to 6 feet 7 inches tall, by her senior year.

“She wasn’t like a clumsy tall person that had to grow into her body,” Jackson said. “She was really quite gifted as far as coordination.”

Griner earned a basketball scholarship to Baylor University, where for four years she performed with a combination of size, skill, fluidity and speed unlike any other women’s basketball player in the country. She could score at will under the basket, and highlight-reel dunks made her mesmerizing.

“Nobody can do what she can do,” Nancy Lieberman, the first woman to play on a professional men’s team, said during Griner’s freshman season at Baylor. “Not Cheryl Miller. Not Lisa Leslie. Not Candace Parker.”

Griner led Baylor to an undefeated record during the 2011-12 season, which the Bears capped with a win over Notre Dame in the national championship game. She won the Big 12 Player of the Year Award three times and made 18 dunks at Baylor. Before her, few women had dunked in a college game at all.

‘She was absolutely a force’

The Mercury drafted Griner in 2013, in the hope that she would rejuvenate their franchise. The turnaround was swift with Griner playing alongside Diana Taurasi, the W.N.B.A.’s career scoring leader. The Mercury made the playoffs during Griner’s rookie season and won a championship in her second. Last season, she was key to the Mercury’s run to the W.N.B.A. finals, where they lost to the Chicago Sky.

“In terms of talent, she was absolutely a force and continues to be a force,” said Pamela Wheeler, a former head of the W.N.B.A. players’ union. “I think that everyone was looking for her to help guide the league, which she did, into a new era.”

The year Griner was drafted, the league…