Brittney Griner says she intends to play this WNBA season

HOUSTON — Houston native and WNBA star Brittney Griner said she intends to play basketball for the Phoenix Mercury this season one week after returning home from Russia where she had been detained since February.

Griner released a new statement Friday morning on her Instagram account giving thanks to all those who were responsible for bringing her home and treating her while she was at a military facility in San Antonio. Griner also vowed to use her platform to help bring American Paul Whelan and others home from being detained overseas.

Here is Griner’s full statement below:

“It feels so good to be home! The last 10 months have been a battle at every turn. I dug deep to keep my faith and it was the love from so many of you that helped keep me going. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone for your help.

“I am grateful to each person who advocated for me, especially my wife, Cherelle Griner, my family, Lindsay Kagawa Colas and Casey Wasserman and my whole team at Wasserman, Vince Kozar and the Phoenix Mercury, the players of the WNBA, and my entire WNBA family, Terri Jackson and the WNBPA staff, my Russian legal team Maria Blagovolina and Alex Boykov, the leaders, activists, and grassroots organizations, Gov. Richardson and Mickey Bergman of the Richardson Center, the Bring Our Families Home Campaign, Roger Carstens and the SPEHA team, and of course, a special thank you to President Biden, Vice President Harris, Secretary Blinken and the entire Biden-Harris Administration.

“President Biden, you brought me home and I know you are committed to bringing Paul Whelan and all Americans home too. I will use my platform to do whatever I can to help you. I also encourage everyone that played a part in bringing me home to continue their efforts to bring all Americans home. Every family deserves to be whole.

“As I transition home to enjoy the holidays with my family, I want to acknowledge and thank the entire PISA staff and medical team at the San Antonio Fort Hood Base. I appreciate the time and care to make sure I was okay and equipped with the tools for this new journey.

“I also want to make one thing very clear: I intend to play basketball for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury this season, and in doing so, I look forward to being able to say ‘thank you’ to those of you who advocated, wrote, and posted for me in person soon.

“Love always, BG #42”

Griner didn’t want any alone time as soon as she boarded a U.S. government plane that would bring her home.

“I have been in prison for 10 months now, listening to Russian. I want to talk,” Griner said, according to Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, who helped secure the basketball star’s release and bring her back to the U.S. last week.

She then asked Carstens, referring to others on the plane: “But, first of all, who are these guys?”

“And she moved right past me and went to every member on that crew, looked them in the eyes, shook their hands and asked about them, got their names, making a personal connection with them,” Carstens recalled in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It was really amazing.”

READ: Supporters celebrate release of Brittney Griner

Ultimately, Griner spent about 12 hours of an 18-hour flight talking with others on the plane, Carstens said. The two-time Olympic gold medalist and Phoenix Mercury pro basketball star spoke about her time in the Russian penal colony and her months in captivity, Carstens recalled, although he declined to go into specific details.

“I was left with the impression this is an intelligent, passionate, compassionate, humble, interesting person, a patriotic person,” Carstens said. “But above all, authentic. I hate the fact that I had to meet her in this manner, but I actually felt blessed having had a chance to get to know her.”

Although Griner was undergoing a full medical and mental evaluation, Carstens said she appeared “full of energy, looked fantastic.”

Griner, who also played pro basketball in Russia, was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in February after Russian authorities said she was carrying vape canisters with cannabis oil. The U.S. State Department declared Griner to be “wrongfully detained” — a charge that Russia has sharply rejected.

President Joe Biden announced on Dec. 8 that the U.S. had secured Griner’s release. In exchange, the administration offered Russia the release of notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, who had been serving a 25-year sentence on charges that he conspired to sell tens of millions of dollars in weapons that U.S officials said were to be used against Americans.

But the U.S. was unable to secure the freedom of Paul Whelan, who has been held in Russia for nearly four years. Administration officials have stressed repeatedly that they are still working to release Whelan, whom Russian officials have jailed on espionage charges that both his family and the U.S. government say are baseless.

READ: President Biden speaks on why American Paul Whelan wasn’t released with Brittney Griner

“They hold Mr. Whelan differently because of these espionage charges,” John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “So we’re working through that now. We are now more informed, clearly having gone through this process over the last few months. We’re more informed. We have a better sense of the context here, where the Russia’s expectations are and we’re just going to keep working on it.”

Carstens, the U.S. government’s top hostage negotiator, said “there’s always cards” to play in securing an offer for Whelan and said he spoke with the jailed American on Dec. 9.

“Here’s what I told him. I said, ‘Paul, you have the commitment of this president. The president’s focused. The secretary of state’s focused. I’m certainly focused, and we’re going to bring you home,’” Carstens said. “And I reminded him, I said, ‘Paul, when you were in the Marines, and I was in the Army, they always reminded you, keep the faith.’ And I said, ‘Keep the faith. We’re coming to get you.’”