WNBA star Brittney Griner spent years boycotting the playing of the national anthem and insisting she could never stand at attention during the song. However, on Sunday, she got emotional during the anthem after the U.S. Women’s Olympic basketball team won gold.
After barely beating France 67-66, Team USA scored its eighth straight gold medal in women’s basketball, and with the gold medal draped around her neck, Griner stood as the anthem played. At one point, she became so emotional that a tear streamed down her face.
This is the same basketball star who, in 2020, advised the WNBA to stop playing the national anthem, Fox News reported, as she supported the race-based claims of the Black Lives Matter movement that maintained that the U.S.A. was inherently racist.
At the time, Griner refused to stand to honor our country during the national anthem and, at one point, even said she would “protest regardless.”
“I’m going to protest regardless. I’m not going to be out there for the National Anthem,” she said. “If the league continues to want to play it, that’s fine. It will be all season long; I’ll not be out there. I feel like more are going to probably do the same thing. I can only speak for myself.”
However, after spending nearly a year in a Russian prison, upon returning to the U.S.A., she changed her tune on the national anthem and, in 2023, announced that in the future, she would stand for the anthem because it “hit different” once she got her freedom back.
@basketballheaven23 BREAKING: During the Gold Medal Ceremony, Brittney Griner started as the National Anthem was playing. Thats because in 2020 in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests Brittney Griner boycotted the National Anthem. But after being detained in Russia for 9 months Griner has changed her opinion on the National Anthem. #wnba #basketball #gold #olympics #cry #nba #nationalanthem #america #usa #france #women #president #biden #jail ♬ original sound – BasketballHeaven
In a statement at the time of her return, Griner defended her previous protests but admitted that she would stand from now on.
“You have the right to protest, the right to able to speak out, question, challenge and do all these things,” Griner said. “What I went through and everything, it just means a little bit more to me now. So, I want to be able to stand. I was literally in a cage [in Russia] and could not stand the way I wanted to.”
“Just being able to hear my national anthem, see my flag, I definitely want to stand. Now, everybody that will not stand or not come out, I totally support them 100%. That’s our right as an American in this great country,” she added.
Griner, though, also insisted that it was ridiculous to accuse her of being unpatriotic because she refused to stand for the national anthem.
“The unpatriotic thing that blows my mind because, one, my dad fought for this country, ’68, ’69, Vietnam Marines and law enforcement for 30 plus years,” she exclaimed in May. “Dad was my hero. I wanted to be a cop. I didn’t want to play basketball growing up, I wanted to be a cop and go into the military, actually. And doesn’t it make me more American that I’m demonstrating a protest? That’s my right as an American, so for me to be called un-American, I was blown away at that.”
Still, the basketball player now insists that it is an honor to represent her country at the Olympics.
“This one meant a lot to me,” Griner said after Team USA beat France on Sunday, according to the Associated Press. “I mean, just having a chance to play for gold, represent my country, what my country did for me? Yeah, this is the highest on the pinnacle right here.”
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