Britney Greener left her impassive face, looked at me with big sad eyes, and said, “The nightmare for me was definitely the feeling that I was forgotten and that I would end up alone.”
I didn’t see a superstar anymore. My heart ached for a young man who was on the ocean away from everyone he knew. “I came here and I was completely alone … I was just like, ah, hell, no, my life is coming to an end,” she said.
We cannot allow Britney’s fear to be forgotten, to come true alone and away from home.
It was 2014 and we were sitting in an empty conference room in Hangzhou, China. I had flown 20 hours from Los Angeles to direct an ESPN documentary for her first season abroad. She had just graduated from college and was drowning in nostalgia. She did not speak the language and none of her team spoke English. She didn’t like the food and survived KFC, Pizza Hut and Skittles. And she spent her waking hours either on hardwood or in her gray penthouse at the Zijingang International Hotel. Imagine the whole melancholy of Lost in Translation and none of Bill Murray.
She was there for the money. As No. 1 in the 2013 WNBA Draft, Britney made $ 49,000 in her first season of Phoenix Mercury for the $ 600,000 she won with the Zhejiang Golden Bulls. If a basketball player wants to win the best dollar, she has to go abroad. Half of the WNBA travels to countries such as China, Russia, Turkey and France for much higher salaries, which raises the question of whether their careers in the United States are considered real out of season.
As I look back at footage of her interview today, I get the feeling that Britney is talking about her fears not then, but now, from the Russian prison cell where she has been held since February 17. She’s abroad again, because that’s where the money is. UMMC Ekaterinburg, where she has played since 2015 and won consecutive championships, pays her more than $ 1 million, compared to approximately $ 228,000 from Phoenix Mercury.
Moscow claims it was caught with hashish oil at Sheremetyevo Airport, a crime punishable by 10 years in prison. But why should we hastily conclude that this black woman is a criminal and that Russian officials are not lying? After years of going through customs in Russia, do we believe she would pack hashish oil now? The accusation of “large-scale drug transport” by the Russian authorities would be ridiculous if the stakes were not so terribly high.
Remember that this is the government that claims that the warship “Moscow” broke out in a “fire of unknown origin” a few weeks ago, instead of admitting that Ukrainian missiles are most likely responsible for its sinking.
The author with Britney Greener in 2014. Photo: Courtesy of Melissa Johnson
I trust Russian officials to tell the truth about Britney as much as I trust a sieve that holds water.
Until the announcement on Tuesday by the US State Department to reclassify Britney as “illegally detained”, the White House, the WNBA and Britney’s family were largely silent. As former WNBA star Lisa Leslie said, “What we were told was not to make too much noise about not being able to use her as a pawn, so to speak, in this war situation.”
When I first heard this directive, I did not question it. I haven’t posted about Britney on social media. As often as women, we are told to behave, to trust experts who know better – to comply. I am a documentary filmmaker. I know nothing about the international hostage negotiations.
The time for silence is over.
Weeks gave way to months. A Moscow court recently announced that her detention would be extended until May 19, a date that could be moved further into the future sooner than you can say, “a violation of human rights.” According to Tom Firestone, a former legal adviser to the US Embassy in Moscow, Britney can be detained without trial for up to 18 months.
The White House’s change of policy on Tuesday could help shorten her sentence, but it could just as easily worsen things amid heightened political tensions between the United States and Russia. Britney could be a political hostage in a violent, homophobic country run by a sociopath who once called gender flexibility teaching a “crime against humanity.”
Britney, a two-time Olympic gold medalist who also won NCAA, WNBA and Euroleague championships, is the rock star of women’s basketball. She immerses herself in freedom, flaunts her gender mismatch in fashionable costumes and, unlike other Britneys, loves to wear albino snakes. She is a black, strange woman from her second marriage and a proud LGBTQ + activist. Few hate the values that Britney embodies more than Vladimir Putin.
We don’t have to wait for her trial to change again. Or, God forbid, just knock, scream, and make noise too late after learning that she disappeared under “mysterious circumstances.”
I believe the Biden administration and Britney’s team worked hard behind closed doors to bring her home. I also believe that the “please don’t make noise” embargo has provided a cover for misogyny and racism for many Americans.
Look for the smug attitude “she gets what she deserves”. Some American “patriots” hate Britney for exercising her right to remain in the locker room for the national anthem in honor of Breona Taylor and other victims of police brutality. They don’t want to hear her say, “I don’t mean that in any way.” My father was in Vietnam and had worked as a lawyer for 30 years. I wanted to be a cop before basketball. I am proud of my country. “
Ask yourself what the hell this is about.
Approximately 100,000 black women and girls disappeared in the United States in 2020 – but they rarely make headlines. According to NPR, the media is four times more likely to report a missing white person than someone who is black or brown. (Some call this the “missing white woman syndrome.”)
In Britney’s case, when does cooperative silence turn into complicit neglect? The answer is right now. Today’s announcement by the State Department leaves no doubt.
Imagine that instead of a 6-foot-9-inch tattooed black woman with dreadlocks in a Russian prison, she was a beautiful blonde with a husband at home. Or what if it was LeBron James or Steph Curry? Or Tom Brady? People would lose their devils. “Don’t make a fuss” would not be an option, because no matter what the State Department may decide, it would be a headline in any news program and mentioned on ESPN twice an hour. Candlelight vigils would scatter America from sea to shining sea.
Perhaps such “vanity” would be bad for the hostage negotiations – but the lack of outrage says it all about why Britney had to go to an authoritarian, homophobic country to get paid in the first place.
At the end of my photos in China with Britney, I asked one last question:
“Flight or invisibility, which power would you choose?”
What a stupid question. Obviously, a basketball player would choose the fields.
“Invisibility,” she said confidently.
I frowned. But it made sense as I followed her through the bowels of the Shanghai subway station, each neck twisting to see a young legend walking past them. In the open-air market, too many people pointed and stared at me to count them. She kindly poses for photos with fan after fan. It must be exhausting to be a spectacle wherever you go.
I didn’t use the moment of invisibility in the film, but I’m obsessed with it these days. As if from Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell the Tale Heart,” as if her wish had been granted, but in the form of a curse.
I wish she had chosen the flight.
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