Brittney Griner is set to return to USA Basketball for the first time since her release from a Russian penal colony 10 months ago as the WNBA star takes the first step towards Paris Olympics

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Brittney Griner is set to make her first appearance for USA Basketball since her release from a Russian penal colony.

Griner, 33, was detained for nearly 10 months in Russia in 2022. She was released last December in a deal with Russia that saw the United States send Viktor Bout – a weapons dealer nicknamed ‘The Merchant of Death’ – back to Russia. He was serving a 25-year sentence in a US prison.

The national team will play the Tennessee Lady Vols on Nov. 5 in Knoxville and Duke on Nov. 12. The team will hold a training camp Nov. 7-9 in Atlanta as the U.S. women chase an eighth straight Olympic gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

USA Basketball will continue to evaluate the player pool before finalizing the roster for the Paris Games.

Griner was arrested in Russia in February 2022 at an airport for possessing vape canisters with cannabis oil.

Her status as an openly gay black woman, locked up in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LBGTQ community, injected racial, gender, and social dynamics into her legal saga and brought unprecedented attention to the population of wrongful detainees in Russia.

Before her conviction, the U.S. State Department declared Griner to be ‘wrongfully detained’ – a charge that Russia sharply rejected.

Following Griner’s arrest at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in February 2022, she pleaded guilty in July but still faced trial because admitting guilt in Russia’s judicial system does not automatically end a case.

She acknowledged in court that she possessed canisters with cannabis oil but said she had no criminal intent and accidentally packed them. Her defense team presented written statements that she had been prescribed cannabis to treat pain.

Weeks before her eventual release, Griner was transferred to a Russian penal colony in Mordovia, approximately 300 miles southeast of Moscow.

The notorious penal colony is known as a rat-infested sweatshop where prisoners have lost fingers during long hours of labor.

To control the rat population, guards used stray cats, which were later disposed of in furnaces to keep their numbers down.

But Griner’s release was finally secured in early December, and she returned to the WNBA this year.

A’ja Wilson, who led the Las Vegas Aces to the WNBA title, currently has her left wrist in a cast. Breanna Stewart is awaiting the birth of her second child with her wife. Chelsea Gray is recovering from a foot injury, preventing her from returning to Duke, her college team.

Taurasi is one of seven players who will participate in both exhibitions, along with Griner, Kahleah Copper, Allisha Gray, Rhyne Howard, Sabrina Ionescu, and Azurá Stevens. This roster features seven Olympians, including two-time gold medalist Griner (2016 and 2021), Angel McCoughtry (2012 and 2016), Ariel Atkins (2021), Gray (2021 in 3-on-3), Kelsey Plum (2021 in 3-on-3), and Jackie Young (2021 in 3-on-3).

Atkins, Copper, Ionescu, Betnijah Laney, and Plum all won gold for the 2022 USA women’s World Cup team in Sydney last fall. Ionescu is among the four New York Liberty players on the roster, with Plum and Young representing the Aces.

The remaining roster includes Aliyah Boston, Dearica Hamby of the Sparks, who recently filed a complaint against the Aces and the WNBA, Natasha Howard, and Arike Ogunbowale.

Cheryl Reeve of the Minnesota Lynx will coach the U.S. team in both games and oversee the training camp, assisted by

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