Table of Contents
Brittney Griner: Bio
Brittney Griner is an American pro basketball player from Houston, Texas. She was born on October 18, 1990. She is well-known because she is the only NCAA basketball player to score 2,000 points and block 500 shots. The 27-year-old player also plays for the Phoenix Mercury in the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association).1
Rivals.com said that Griner was the best High School girl basketball player in the country in 2009. She also led Baylor University to the national championship for women in 2012.
Brittney was still in a lot of trouble in 2013 after she came out as a lesbian. During the interview, she also said that she had been picked on a lot because she was bigger. Also, her father didn’t like the fact that she was gay. Later, she became the first openly lesbian player Nike has ever signed.
Brittney Griner: Biographical Details
| Full Name | Brittney Yevette Griner |
| Nick Name | Griner |
| Date of Birth (DOB), Birthday | October 18, 1990 |
| Birth Place | Houston, Texas, United States |
| Profession | Basketball Player |
| Nationality | American |
| Affairs & More | |
| Marital Status | Married |
| Husband/Wife | Cherelle Griner (m. 2019) Cherelle Griner
Glory Johnson (m. 2015–2016) Glory Johnson
|
| Affairs(Boyfriend) | Update soon |
| Sexual Orientation (Gay or Lesbian) | Lesbian |
| Children | N/A |
Brittney Griner: College Career
Griner went to college at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and played basketball there. As a freshman, Griner blocked 223 shots, which was the most ever in a single season. This made her one of the best shot blockers in the history of women’s basketball.2
Griner got Baylor’s first triple-double on December 16, 2009. She scored 34 points, grabbed 13 rebounds, and blocked 11 shots, which was a Big 12 Conference record. In January 2010, she made the second and third dunks of her college career in a 99–18 win over Texas State University.
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She was only the seventh player to dunk in a women’s college basketball game and the second woman to do it twice in the same game.
On March 3, 2010, Griner and Jordan Barncastle of Texas Tech were fighting for position near the lane. As Barncastle was getting called for a foul, Griner moved forward two steps and hit him with a right-handed roundhouse punch, breaking Barncastle’s nose.
Then Griner was kicked out of the game. Then, Lady Bears coach Kim Mulkey added another one-game suspension to the one-game suspension that was already required by NCAA rules.
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Brittney Griner: Professional Career
Griner dunking at the 2015 WNBA All-Star game, which was held at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut. Only the late Margo Dydek, at 7 feet 2 inches (2.18 m), Bernadett Határ, at 6 feet 10.5 inches (2.096 m), and Han Xu, at 6 feet 10 inches, have been taller than Griner on the international stage (2.08 m).
The Phoenix Mercury picked Griner with the first pick in the 2013 WNBA draft. Griner tied Candace Parker’s WNBA dunk record in her first game on May 27, 2013, when she dunked twice against the Chicago Sky. She was the third player in the WNBA to dunk, and the first to do it twice in the same game.
During the season, she was the best defender in the league. On average, she blocked 3.0 shots per game. Griner was chosen as a WNBA All-Star, but she hurt her right knee and had to miss the 2013 WNBA All-Star Game. Tina Thompson played in her place.
In April 2013, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, said he might draft Griner into the NBA. Griner was interested in the chance, but the team did not offer her a chance to try out.
Griner’s statistics got better in 2014, when she averaged 15.6 points, 8.0 rebounds, and 3.7 blocks per game. Griner set a WNBA record on June 29, 2014, when she blocked 11 shots in a game against the Tulsa Shock and also scored 21 points and grabbed 8 rebounds.
Griner dunked in a playoff game for the first time on August 24, 2014, when she helped the Mercury beat the Los Angeles Sparks 93–68 at Staples Center.
Brittney Griner: Personal Life
Griner came out as a lesbian in 2013. The following year, she was the first openly gay athlete to get a sponsorship deal with Nike. She often spoke out on LGBTQ issues, and in her memoir, In My Skin: My Life on and off the Basketball Court, which she wrote with Sue Hovey in 2014, she talked about the problems she had faced as a gay African American woman.3
After an incident at their home in April 2015, Griner and her then-girlfriend, WNBA player Glory Johnson, were arrested and charged with assault and disorderly conduct. Later, they both pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, and the WNBA suspended them both for seven games.
The couple got married in May 2015, had twins, and then split up in 2016. After three years, Griner got married to a teacher named Cherelle Watson. After Brittney Griner was arrested in Russia, her mother, Cherelle Griner, spoke out for her freedom.
Brittney Griner: Facts
- She went to Houston’s Nimitz High School. She played volleyball on the varsity team as a freshman and basketball for all four years of high school. She was chosen for the All-American basketball team in 2009. She went to school at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, from 2009 to 2013, where she played basketball.
- In 2012, she was given the ESPY Award for Best Female Athlete.
- She told the public she was a lesbian on February 11, 2013. On April 15, 2013, she was picked first overall by the Phoenix Mercury in the 2013 Women’s National Basketball Association draft.
- Draft of the Association in Bristol. Connecticut, USA. She played basketball in China for the Zhejiang Golden Bulls of the Women’s Chinese Basketball Association from 2013 to 2014. She signed a $600,000 four-month contract with the team.
- She got engaged to WNBA player Glory Johnson on August 14, 2014. She was the first WNBA player to dunk in a playoff game on August 24, 2014, when she helped the Phoenix Mercury win.
- At Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, USA, Mercury beat the Los Angeles Sparks 93–68. “In My Skin: My Life on and Off the Basketball Court,” which is her autobiography, came out in 2014. From 2014 to 2019, she played in the Russian Premier League for UMMC Ekaterinburg, which is based in Ekaterinburg.
- She led the U.S. women’s basketball team to victory at the 2016 Summer Olympics, which were held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 2016.
- After her rookie contract with the Phoenix Mercury ended on March 12, 2017, she signed a new deal with the team for more than one year.
- In August 2018, she got engaged to Cherelle Watson. They got married in June 2019.
- In 2020, she protested the Star Spangled Banner and said she wouldn’t be on the basketball court when the national anthem was played before WNBA games.
- She was the coach of the U.S. women’s basketball team at the 2020 Summer Olympics, which took place in Tokyo, Japan, from July to August 2021.
- She was arrested in Russia on February 17, 2022, for smuggling. She was held at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Lobnya, Moscow Oblast, Russia, because she was carrying vaporizer cartridges with less than a gram of hash oil.
- In a court in Khimki, Russia, on July 7, 2022, she pleaded guilty to having drugs on her person. On August 4, 2022, the court found her guilty and gave her a $9-year prison sentence and a $16,301 fine. Her lawyers said that on November 17, 2022, she was sent to IK-2, a prison for women in Yavas, Mordovia, Russia.
- Russia let her go on December 8, 2022, in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. She was 32 years old at the time.
Brittney Griner: Education
She said that she went to Nimitz High School when she talked about her education. There, she got a letter every year she played basketball in high school.
She also played volleyball on the varsity team as a freshman. She practiced with the boys’ basketball team when she was a sophomore.
During her junior year, more than 2.7 million people watched a YouTube video of her dunks. This led her to meet Shaquille O’Neal, a great basketball player and analyst, in the end.
She went to Baylor University in Waco, Texas, after that. There, too, she was on the college basketball team.
Brittney Griner: Relationship
On February 11, 2013, Brittney Griner told the public that she was a lesbian. It was said in a SI.com interview.
She is married to Cherelle T. Griner at the moment. On June 19, 2021, they celebrated their third wedding anniversary.
Next, on August 2, 2018, they told the world on Instagram that they were getting married. The first time they met was at Baylor, as Brittney wrote in an Instagram post about her anniversary.
She was first married to Glory Johnson from May 8, 2015, until June 27, 2016. Before this, on August 14, 2014, the two WNBA players told the world they were getting married.
Eight months after getting engaged, on April 22, 2015, the couple was arrested on charges of assault and disorderly conduct. The police stopped the couple from fighting in their home in Goodyear, Arizona.
Also, on May 15, 2015, both she and Glory were suspended for seven games by the WNBA.
This happened after the first person pleaded guilty to charges of being in a bad mood. She also had to go to counseling for 26 weeks about domestic violence.
In the same way, the couple announced on June 4, 2015, that Glory was expecting twins. The next day, she filed to have the marriage thrown out.
Also, Glory didn’t have a biological connection to the twins because she got pregnant through IVF with donated eggs and sperm. In June 2016, the couple officially split up.
Brittney Griner: Net Worth 2023
Brittney Griner’s exact net worth is hard to figure out because this information is not available to the public. But as a professional basketball player in the WNBA, she probably makes a good salary and has probably made money from endorsements and other sources as well.
The average salary for a WNBA player is around $75,000, but top players like Griner can make much more. She may also have made money from playing basketball internationally and getting endorsements from companies like Nike and BODYARMOR. Griner probably has a net worth in the millions of dollars as a whole.
Brittney Griner: Awards and Acievements
- The WNBA winner (2014)
- 7× WNBA All-Star (2013-2015, 2017-2019, 2021)
- 2 The WNBA scoring champion (2017, 2019)
- 8 The WNBA leader in blocks (2013-2019, 2021)
- WNBA Peak Performer (2017, 2019)
- 3 First Team All-WNBA (2014, 2019, 2021)
- 3 Second Team of the WNBA (2015, 2017, 2018)
- Two times, she was named WNBA Defensive Player of the Year (2014, 2015)
- 3 All-Defense First Team in the WNBA (2014, 2015, 2018)
- 4 All-Defense Second Team in the WNBA (2016, 2017, 2019, 2021)
- WNBA All-Rookie Team (2013)
- WNBA Team for the 25th Anniversary (2021)
- 3 The winner of the Russian National League (2015-2017)
- 4× EuroLeague champion (2016, 2018, 2019, 2021)
- Who won the Russian Cup? (2017)
- NCAA winner (2012)
- The best player in the NCAA Final Four (2012)
- Player of the Year by the AP (2012)
- Award for Honda Sports (2012)
- 2 Winner of the Wade Trophy (2012, 2013)
- 2 All-American first team – AP (2011, 2012)
- All-American second team – AP (2010)
- 3 Player of the Year in the Big 12 (2011-2013)
- 4 Big 12 Player of the Year for Defense (2010-2013)
- The McDonald’s All-American (2009)
- WBCA Player of the Year in High School (2009)
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