Brittney Griner's detainment in Russia leaves WNBA players facing a dilemma over playing abroad

• Brittney Griner's detention in Russia following a drug arrest has rattled the WNBA community.
• Stars told Insider they're skeptical that her situation will dissuade players from competing abroad.

Brittney Griner's continued detention in Russia has rocked the WNBA community to its core.

The seven-time WNBA All-Star and two-time Olympic gold medalist was arrested at a Moscow airport in February for possession of vape cartridges filled with cannabis oil. She's been held in the country ever since and faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty.

But her scary situation may not be enough to dissuade players from traveling overseas during the WNBA off-season. Several stars have suggested that, despite concerns about player safety, the league's athletes may very well continue to play abroad.

"It could have been any of us, but I don't know if it's necessarily gonna stop people from going overseas," Washington Mystics forward Elizabeth Williams told Insider. "It just might change the landscape a little bit, to be honest.

"It sounds cynical, but it might just be that people won't play in Russia anymore and they find somewhere else to play," she added.

WNBA players have long weighed financial incentives against their own comfort. Now, personal safety is part of the calculus.

It's a serious dilemma affecting many of the best women's basketball players on the planet. For much of the WNBA's existence, a subset of its players have jetted around the globe to compete for clubs in foreign markets in order to supplement the relatively modest incomes they earn in the WNBA.

This phenomenon is by no means limited to role players and reserves; even superstars of Griner's caliber spend time overseas. Griner herself has spent every off-season since 2014 suiting up for Russian powerhouse UMMC Ekaterinburg, alongside a rotating group of fellow WNBA standouts, including Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones, Allie Quigley, Courtney Vandersloot, and Emma Meesseman.

These players command significantly higher salaries abroad than they can earn in the States, with Griner reportedly taking home $1 million each season from UMMC Ekaterinburg. Stewart, who reportedly makes approximately $1.5 million with the club, is weighing her options, but one side of her scale includes a big pile of cash.

"It's just kind of an unknown, as far as a overseas," Stewart, who is widely considered to be among the WNBA's top players, told Insider. "Obviously Europe is gonna keep doing what it does. EuroLeague is gonna continue to keep happening. The state of Russia, I'm not sure."

"It's just one of those things that you kind of wait and see," she added.

Stateside, Stewart is set to take home a league-maximum $228,094 annual base salary from the Seattle Storm this year — similar to what Griner is set to receive from Phoenix. But WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told Insider both players and other league superstars are eligible to make much more — around $500,000 total between bonuses and marketing opportunities — should they stay in America for the winter.

As part of the WNBA's landmark 2020 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) — which significantly increased player salaries — the league and its 12 franchises committed to spending a minimum of $1.6 million each off-season on league and team marketing agreements. The goal of these deals is to compensate players for promoting the WNBA and its teams in the states, thereby offering stars a profitable alternative to traveling overseas for a second paycheck.

Engelbert says that "every player has an opportunity to make league marketing dollars" during the off-season. But this year, just three players — Betnijah Laney, Napheesa Collier, and Dearica Hamby — signed such agreements, with 29 additional players across the league taking on less lucrative team marketing contracts.

Though all three players currently signed to league marketing deals were 2021 All-Stars, none boasts the name recognition and star power of players like Griner or Stewart.

"The marketing around women's basketball and the investment in female athletes is getting much better; people are starting to put their money where their mouth is," Stewart said. "But it's gonna take more than that."

For some players, heading overseas is about more than a paycheck

For many players, heading abroad is predominantly about padding their wallets. Diana Taurasi — the WNBA's all-time leading scorer who spent years playing in Russia — even said on an ESPN 30 For 30 podcast from 2020 that "the only reason you go there is for money."

But for Williams and some other players, there's more to the story. Sure, "the contracts are still super-enticing," as the Mystics star noted. But pride and loyalty are also part of the equation, and the 2017 WNBA All-Star and member of the league's 2020 All-Defensive First Team is a prime example.

A key contributor to Fenerbahce Safisport during the Turkish club's run to the EuroLeague championship game, Williams earned Defensive Player of the Year and All-EuroLeague Women Second Team honors after averaging 12.2 points, 9.2 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 1.8 steals, and a league-leading 2.3 blocks this season. Her 20.7 player efficiency rating per game ranked among the top five in a league filled with European standouts and WNBA superstars alike.

"A lot of us have reputations in Europe," Williams explained. "A lot of fans [here] don't realize. They're like, man, that player gets overseas in EuroLeague and is killing it. And then in the W, you don't really hear from them, but a lot of it is your reputation and the circumstances that you're in overseas.

"And so sometimes it's hard to turn that down and say 'I'm only gonna play in the W,'" Williams added. "That's the reality that we're in when it comes to overseas."

Still, players sympathize with Griner's experience. Many of them, like Stewart, played alongside her for UMMC Ekaterinburg. Others, like Williams, have played against her in Russia or EuroLeague.

Regardless, those in and around the WNBA have reached an overwhelming consensus — that it really could have been anybody embroiled in the situation Griner now finds herself in.

"That's just terrifying," Williams said. "I think about how many times I fly over here, how many times we've gone through that airport. I don't know, it could have been any of us."

Taurasi echoed similar sentiments, noting that "it's a dangerous world everywhere you go," during a recent media availability in Phoenix.

"It might change the perspective of different people going overseas," she said. "That's a personal choice people are going to have to make."

Further complicating the situation: The WNBA is instituting a policy aimed at keeping players from competing abroad

The WNBA's "prioritization" rules are one aspect of the league's 2020 CBA that has become increasingly relevant in recent months — especially in light of Griner's arrest in February. Starting next season, the league will use financial penalties and suspensions to dissuade players from missing time with their WNBA teams in favor of overseas commitments.

"With the different WNBA rules with going overseas, I think the whole dynamic of playing overseas basketball has changed completely," Taurasi said.

Beginning in 2023, WNBA players with at least two years of experience who don't arrive in time for their team's training camp will be fined 1% of their base salary for every day they miss. Should they return to the States after the start of official gameplay or after May 1 — whichever comes later — they'll be suspended for the entire season.

The following year, the penalty for being late to camp or arriving after May 1 — again, whichever is later — will be a full-season suspension.

For some players, including Stewart, this change is not a welcome one.

"It was something that the league wanted and in order to get some of the things that we wanted, you gotta compromise, I guess," Stewart said. "But I'm not really happy about the compromise.

"It's hard when you have a family — when you have people, you don't want to be moving all over the place," she added. "But our basketball window is only so short and we want to make sure we capitalize on it as much as possible."