Brittney Griner, imprisoned for ten months in Russia in 2022 and who missed all of last season of the North American Women’s Basketball Championship (WNBA), was selected on Sunday for the WNBA All-Star Game which will pit the best players from the season on July 15 in Las Vegas.
Griner, who is playing in his 10th WNBA season, will play this gala match for the ninth time, the North American League said.
She averages 19.1 points and 6.4 rebounds per game, but her team, Phoenix, has the worst record in the championship so far (2 v-10 d) and sacked coach Vanessa Nygaard on Sunday.
The pivot was arrested in February 2022 at a Moscow airport with a vaporizer and liquid containing cannabis, a product banned in Russia. She was about to play for the Yekaterinburg team during the American offseason.
Sentenced in August to nine years in prison, she was finally exchanged in December for the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, a prisoner in the United States.
She returned to the courts in May with her club Phoenix Mercury, greeted by a standing ovation during the WNBA season opener in Los Angeles.
The 32-year-old double Olympic champion with Team USA (2016 and 2020) missed three games for a hip injury and returned on Saturday for a loss (97-74) against Seattle.