After shaking hands with the Merchant of Death in prison swap, Griner takes on Opals

Brittney Griner spent 293 days in a Russian prison camp and was released after a prisoner exchange with a high-profile weapons dealer. Now, she will be a key weapon for the USA in their clash with the Opals.

Less than two years ago American basketball star Brittney Griner was shaking hands with a convicted Russian weapons smuggler on an Abu Dhabi airport runway after a bombshell prisoner exchange.

The moustachioed Viktor Bout had sold Soviet-made weaponry in Sierra Leone, Liberia, South America and to the Taliban and was nicknamed “The Merchant of Death”.

Griner’s only crime had been monumental stupidity _ taking a vaporiser into Russia with a gram of cannabis oil _ as she travelled to Moscow to play with local club team UMMC Ekaterinburg.

Sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison, she repeatedly contemplated taking her own life.

Of all the unlikely Olympic stories in Paris, the odds of her being on a court against Australia in their semi-final were preposterous.

Brittney Griner is just one of many freakishly talented attacking weapons Australia must stop. Picture: AFP

She is just one of many freakishly talented attacking weapons Australia must stop, with 33-year-old Griner playing 15 minutes a game off the bench averaging 8.8 points, 4.8 rebounds and nearly a block a game.

It certainly beats living in a Russian prison cell as Phoenix Mercury star Griner closes in her third Olympics gold medal after taking 2023 off to recover in mind and body.

In the gold medal game in 2021 Griner’s 30-point haul capped off the perfect tournament.

As Griner returned to American soil after president Joe Biden helped orchestrate that prisoner exchange, she vowed never to leave US soil again.

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The one caveat?

“If I make that (Olympic) team, that would be the only time I would leave U.S. soil and that’s to represent the USA,” she said.

Griner spent 10 months of imprisonment in a Russian penal colony Mordovia.

In her memoir she said her mattress had two huge blood stains on it, the prisoners were allowed a single toilet roll a month, her job was to cut fabric for military uniforms.

The Opals will need to contain Brittney Griner’s physicality. Picture: AFP

She has said of those helpless moments in prison in those 293 days in Russia that suicide seemed her only way out.

“I wanted to take my life more than once in the first weeks …. Before I became the cool athlete, I was the weirdo and the one that was just so different. I was like that spectacle again. When I first (went into the county cell, and I was in isolation, just the bad thoughts just started creeping in: My life is over. Who will be alive when I come out? Will my parents still be there? Will me and my wife make it nine years while locked up? All these bad thoughts started coming in, and it just felt like it would be better if I wasn’t here, maybe.”

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Those desperate times are now beyond her as she attempts to go out on an Olympic high, with Australia in the way of another gold medal playoff.

Australia will attempt to play a physical style as Jade Melbourne aggressively drives to the rim and Allana Smith protects the boards.

With Griner coming off the bench and attempting to thwart both of those goals, it will be a must-watch battle.