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Less than two years ago, the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner was starting her nine-year sentence in a penal colony in Russia, sewing uniforms for the Russian military and subsisting on spoiled food. She lived for glimpses of the sky. She had never been farther from the sport that made her a household name. A smoking habit she\u2019d picked up in prison had diminished her lung capacity. She rarely got to hear from her wife, Cherelle, or her family and friends, and she had no idea when \u2014 or if \u2014 she would be coming home.<\/p>\n
Griner was arrested at the Moscow Airport in February 2022, when officials found two vape cartridges in her backpack with 0.7 grams of cannabis oil. (To treat Griner\u2019s chronic pain, a physician in Arizona had prescribed medical marijuana, but it was against the law in Russia.) She was charged with illegal drug possession and smuggling \u201ca significant amount\u201d of narcotics into the country and was sent to prison.<\/p>\n
That December, after 10 months of detainment in Russia, she was finally released. She jumped back into playing, thinking the routine and familiarity would ground her. But the transition was rocky, and she is only now back in shape. On May 7, she\u2019ll publish a memoir, \u201cComing Home,\u201d detailing her ordeal. <\/p>\n