WNBA Brittney Griner, Wife Cherelle Welcome Baby Boy, Reveal Basketball Player on ‘She Knows Sports’ Podcast

Brittney Griner is gaining an extra fan to cheer her on this Olympic season.

The WNBA star and her wife Cherelle welcomed their first child on July 8, Griner, 33, revealed on the “She Knows Sports” podcast on Friday.

“That’s my husband,” Griner revealed when asked about her son. “He’s amazing. They say the minute you see him, everything you thought mattered just goes out the window. And that’s literally what happens.”

The two-time gold medalist will leave for the 2024 Paris Olympics next week.

“It kind of sucks that I have to go,” added Griner, who described himself as “Pops.” “But at the same time, I think he’ll understand. … My whole phone has turned into him now.”

The couple already posted a pregnancy announcement on Instagram in April.

Griner will play for Team USA in Saturday’s WNBA All-Star Game ahead of the Olympics. She is averaging 18.6 points, 6.4 rebounds and 1.4 blocks in 15 games for the Phoenix Mercury this season.

The newfound joy and successful basketball season follows Griner’s nearly year-long imprisonment in Russia after he was wrongly sentenced to nine years in prison for drug trafficking in 2022.

Griner, who played for a Russian women’s basketball team during the off-season for many years, was arrested at a Moscow airport in February 2022 after authorities found cannabis oil in her luggage.

She later apologized repeatedly, saying she had accidentally taken less than a gram of the substance. Her lawyers said the cannabis oil had been prescribed to Griner for “severe chronic pain.”

The 10-time All Star was released in December 2022 in a prisoner swap with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was serving 25 years in the US. She had previously been transferred to a penal colony in Mordovia.

Months of “difficult” negotiations with the Russians resulted in the swap, according to senior U.S. officials. It was only in the weeks leading up to Griner’s release that it became clear that there was a possibility of securing the American basketball star’s return.

In December, Cherelle Griner joined President Joe Biden in thanking the administration for its help in securing her wife’s release, saying she was “overwhelmed with emotion.”