Fans, friends and allies from across the sports world were overtaken with joy when news of Brittney Griner’s release broke Thursday morning. The U.S. government successfully orchestrated a 1-to-1 prisoner swap with Russia to bring Griner home after she spent months in detainment on drug smuggling charges and later sentenced to nine years in prison.
As it stands now, she’s free, safe and on a flight home. But it didn’t come without a heavy cost considering who she was swapped for. And there’s still plenty of work to be done to bring another detainee home, too.
Let’s dig into the aftermath of all this now that Griner is on her way back to the United States.