Despite having an incredible year with the Phoenix Mercury, Brittney Griner needed to take a break to focus on her mental health.
Everybody has had their opinion about it and now a prominent personality at ESPN is giving his two cents.
The WNBA All-Star is playing in her first season since returning from Russia, where she was imprisoned for nearly a year.
Stephen A. Smith defended basketball star Brittney Griner’s decision to take a break from the sport for her own mental health. He made his comments on the most recent episode of “The Stephen A. Smith Show.”
“First of all, God bless you. All the best to you, Brittney. If anybody, anybody at all, has a perfectly logical explanation for needing to step away from basketball to address their mental health after what she endured, it’s Brittney Griner,” Smith said. “She was imprisoned. I don’t care what reason there was. Whatever the case may be, she was a political tool that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government used at that time.”
The 32-year-old has been through so much and had to deal with being imprisoned in a different country where she did not speak any of the language. You have to think she may have thought she would’ve never been freed and stuck over there for the duration of her sentence before she was finally freed.
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We send our best to Griner during this trying time.
Hopefully, she gets the help she needs.
Griner has averaged 18.2 points and 6.7 rebounds per game for the Mercury this season.
The Mercury sit in fifth place in the Western Conference at 6-19.
