At 6'9″, Brittney Griner is unusually tall for a woman. With a shoe size of 17 or 18, depending on the brand, Brittney has bigger feet than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. She has hands bigger than LeBron James', the reason why she has been able to palm the basketball since she was in high school.
With all these attributes, a deep voice, plus a manly stature, she has been mistaken for a man before.
During the WNBA star's infamous imprisonment in Russia, Griner claimed that the Russian prison guards tried to put her in a men's cell instead of locking her up with women.
"I was terrified when I was thinking about going to that jail. Because I was like, 'What game are they gonna play?'" Griner said . "And I soon found one of the games [was] trying to tell me to go into one of the men's cells. And I'm like, 'I'm not going in that cell.' And then the other guard said something in Russian and shook his hand and then they took me to the women's side. And I was just, like, 'See, it's a game, you know?"
It was in 2022 when Griner was arrested at Sheremetyevo International Airport near Moscow after Customs officials found vape cartridges containing cannabis in her luggage. Griner ended up sentenced to 10 years in prison and served 10 months behind bars before she was released in a controversial high-profile prisoner swap involving a Russian arms dealer.
It's unclear which prison she was talking about, but Griner was first held at the pre-trial detention center at Ishka before she was transferred after the verdict to the isolated all-female IK-2 penal colony in Mordovia, which is 300 miles away from Russia and is known for its poor conditions, which Griner confirmed.
"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it and they give you these thin two sheets, so you're basically laying on bars," Griner revealed .
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The incident in Russia isn't the only time that Griner has been treated as a man in her life. As she told ESPN in 2015, she always gets called out for being a boy while in China. She recalled an incident where she was forced out of the ladies' toilet because she was mistaken for a man.
"One time when I went into the bathroom there, a lady was so shocked that she was pushing me out; she was so hysterically shocked that I was in there. I couldn't do anything but laugh. I didn't even try to defend myself and tell her I was a girl. I ended up just going over to the men's room and went into one of the stalls. I've even had to do that in the States a couple of times," she said .
All in all, being imprisoned in Russia is 100 times worse than being pushed out of China's women's toilet. She's lucky the federal government fought for her and that she can live a normal life now.
This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Aug 14, 2026, where it first appeared in the Off The Court section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
