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      Why Brittney Griner Could Be the Last American Basketball Star in Russia

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      The atrocities of the war in Ukraine and Griner’s detention in Russia on drug charges could cut off a lucrative pipeline for women’s basketball players.Mike Cound had decided on a figure — a reasonable salary request, he said — for a client who wanted to play for UMMC Yekaterinburg, a professional women’s basketball team in Russia. As an experienced sports agent, that was what he was supposed to do.But when he doubled the request on a whim, the team accepted without hesitation. And when another client injured her knee and could not play, the team paid her anyway. For yet another client, UMMC Yekaterinburg offered more than triple the amount she could make in the W.N.B.A. in the United States — if she would agree to play only in Russia.None of that was normal. But UMMC Yekaterinburg was not like any other team.“There’s nothing like it in sports,” Cound said. “The Yankees, maybe, in the old days with George Steinbrenner, when they would pay four times as much as somebody else.”That type of spending and largess, fed by the Russian oligarchs who own teams for pride and political reasons, has drawn many W.N.B.A. players over the years to a country they barely know, thousands of miles from home, for a financial bounty generally unavailable in the United States.But those days may be over. Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s detention of the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner on drug charges and increasing pressure from the W.N.B.A. to limit overseas play have forced an overdue reconsideration of the ethical and financial implications of playing basketball in Russia.Griner, a center for the Phoenix Mercury who was in Russia to play for UMMC Yekaterinburg when she was detained in February, was reportedly earning at least $1 million from the team — far more than the W.N.B.A.’s maximum base salary of about $230,000. Similar paydays have lured other big-name stars, like Diana Taurasi and Breanna Stewart.UMMC Yekaterinburg celebrated winning the EuroLeague Women in 2021.Murad Sezer/ReutersBut Griner’s detention, the atrocities of the war and related economic sanctions have heightened the scrutiny of associating with Russian businesses — including its basketball teams. The State Department on Tuesday said that Griner had been “wrongfully detained” and that its officials were working to have her released. Griner could be the last American basketball star to play professionally in Russia, fracturing a lucrative pipeline that a list of renowned players has tapped for a generation.“If you’ve got your daughter you’re entrusting with me and listening to my counsel,” Cound said, “I do not see where I can look you in the face and say, ‘Yeah, this is a good idea,’ if Vladimir Putin is still in charge.”‘We can get the best’As the Mercury prepare for the 2022 W.N.B.A. season, which begins Friday, Griner remains in custody with other women in Russia, where she has gone to play basketball since 2015.In February, Russian customs officials accused Griner of carrying vape cartridges with hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow. If Griner is convicted, she can face up to 10 years in prison. American officials have long accused Russia of detaining people on trumped-up charges.In March, a Russian court extended Griner’s time in custody until at least May 19. That hearing did not deal with the merits of the case. The State Department has not explained why or how its officials determined that her detention was wrongful.In March, Lisa Leslie, the Hall of Fame player, said on the “I Am Athlete” podcast that she and others in the W.N.B.A. community were told not to make a “big fuss” over Griner’s detention for fear of inflaming tensions with Russia. The State Department’s statement on Tuesday was the most significant public acknowledgment of Griner’s situation by the U.S. government.Some W.N.B.A. players and fans have been vocal, using a #FreeBrittney hashtag on social media to plead for intervention. But most, like Taurasi, Griner’s Mercury teammate, have said little as part of a strategy of quiet diplomacy.A fan showed his support for Griner during a men’s basketball game between Iowa State and Baylor in March. (Griner won a national title with Baylor in 2012.)LM Otero/Associated Press“I spent 10 years there, so I know the way things work,” said Taurasi, who has played for Russian teams and is the leading scorer in W.N.B.A. history. “It’s delicate.”UMMC Yekaterinburg paid Taurasi a reported $1.5 million to skip the 2015 W.N.B.A. season and play only in Russia.“It was a very personal choice,” Taurasi told The New York Times at the time. “My agent said it would be financially irresponsible not to do it.”UMMC Yekaterinburg, based in the city of the same name and roughly a two-hour flight from Moscow, is controlled by the oligarch Iskander Makhmudov and his business partner, Andrei Kozitsyn. Makhmudov and Kozitsyn head Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, which mines commodities like copper, zinc, coal, gold and silver, and is one of Russia’s top producers.They were part of a wave of oligarchs who amassed their wealth after the collapse of the Soviet Union by investing in industries like gas, oil and precious metals. Following Putin’s ascent, oligarchs like Roman Abramovich, Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Prokhorov bought into prominent sports franchises, like the soccer teams Chelsea and Arsenal F.C. and the N.B.A.’s Nets.While some owners had legitimate reasons for investing in sports, others who funded or purchased teams were doing so at least in part to seem more legitimate to American and British authorities, according to Karen Greenaway, a retired F.B.I. agent who investigated international corruption and spent a part of her career in the former Soviet Union. Makhmudov has been linked to criminal activity and has business associations with other oligarchs tied to organized crime in Russia, according to civil suits lodged in the United States and the United Kingdom by competitors and law enforcement officials.Makhmudov was accused of being involved in a scheme to take over the Russian aluminum industry, according to a civil case filed in New York in 2000. In it, Makhmudov and two other oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska and Michael Cherney, were accused of a racketeering scheme which involved fraud, bribery and attempted murder. They contested the allegations, and the case was dismissed in the United States because the judge consented to move it to Russia.“Organized crime was making the money, and Makhmudov and Deripaska were investing the money,” Greenaway said. Several attempts to reach Makhmudov and Kozitsyn for this article were unsuccessful.Proceeds from mining helped Makhmudov and Kozitsyn invest in women’s basketball and other sports in Russia, like martial arts and table tennis.Andrei Kozitsyn at a news conference in 2014.Maxim Shemetov/ReutersAnother former F.B.I. agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his current employer had barred him from speaking publicly, said oligarchs want to be associated with high-profile legitimate businesses like sports teams to make it more difficult for Putin to severely punish them without anyone noticing. Making too much money outside Russia could upset Putin, the agent said, as could seeming to interfere with his political agenda. “When oligarchs have stepped into the fray, then he comes after you full guns ablazing,” the agent said.Brendan Dwyer, an associate professor and a director at the Center for Sport Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University, said interest in Russian women’s basketball is related to Putin’s desire that Russia be viewed as a worldwide sports powerhouse.“Really, it’s an opportunity for the oligarchs to draw the best international talent to the country and raise awareness for the sport,” Dwyer said, noting Putin’s background in judo. “But I think the ultimate goal is to showcase: ‘Listen, we have the best athletes in the world. We are the best country in the world. We can get the best to come here.’”‘More than the whole budget of the next team’Yekaterinburg sits on an eastern slope of the Ural Mountains, close to Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, and is a city where the profits of the country’s mining and metallurgical industries pool. The city gained infamy in 1918 when Czar Nicholas II, Russia’s last czar, was killed along with his family by Bolshevik revolutionaries during the Russian Revolution.The Russian Basketball Federation governs several men’s and women’s basketball leagues, including the women’s Premier League with about a dozen teams. UMMC Yekaterinburg has dominated the Premier League, where most of the teams are bankrolled by government municipalities. Makhmudov lists the team on his website among his charitable endeavors.“There’s this vision that this is happening all over Russia,” Cound said. “No, no. It’s this team. You probably have three players on Yekat that’s more than the whole budget of the next team down.”Right before UMMC Yekaterinburg’s run of sustained dominance began in 2008, Taurasi and Sue Bird, two of the world’s most famous women’s basketball players, won several EuroLeague championships for Spartak Moscow. In 2006, the average W.N.B.A. salary was only $47,000 a year, with the league maximum at $91,000 for veterans.In Russia, Bird and Taurasi were treated like celebrities. Shabtai Kalmanovich, Spartak Moscow’s owner, lavished players with high salaries, cash bonuses and gifts.Iskander Makhmudov, the president of Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, in 2014.Dmitry Dukhanin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKalmanovich once told ESPN that he lost millions every season. The team paid to have its games broadcast in Russia and did not charge fans to attend, hoping to first get spectators invested in the sport before charging admission.He told Sports Illustrated in 2008 that “you need to have a big heart” and to “be something between a fanatic and a patriot” to invest in women’s basketball. But for the very rich, like Kalmanovich, that was often enough incentive.“If you understand that you can’t eat breakfast twice, and you can wear only one tie at a time, there might as well be something else,” he said.What to Know About Brittney Griner’s Detention in RussiaCard 1 of 5What happened? More

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      Russia Is Barred From Women’s Euros and 2023 World Cup

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      Russian soccer teams and clubs were barred from all European competitions, including the Champions League, for the 2022-23 season.Russia was ejected from this summer’s European women’s soccer championship and barred from qualifying for the 2023 Women’s World Cup on Monday, deepening a sporting isolation that resulted from the country’s invasion of Ukraine.UEFA, the governing body for soccer in Europe, announced its decisions Monday. In addition to barring Russia’s team from the two biggest competitions in women’s soccer, the governing body said it had suspended all Russian national teams and clubs from UEFA competitions until further notice.Russian clubs were also barred from all UEFA competitions — including the Champions League, the richest club competition in soccer — for the 2022-23 season.Russia will not participate in this summer’s UEFA Women’s EURO 2022. Portugal, the opponent defeated by Russia in the qualifying play-offs, will now participate in Group C.Additionally, Russian teams will not participate in UEFA club competitions next season.More info: ⬇️— UEFA (@UEFA) May 2, 2022
      The punishments had previously been applied most prominently to Russian men’s teams, tossing Russia out of qualifying for this year’s World Cup in Qatar when it needed only two more wins to earn a place in the field and ejecting a Russian club, Spartak Moscow, from the knockout rounds of the Europa League.Russia’s women had missed two World Cup qualifiers in April as a result of the earlier ban on its teams, but UEFA had postponed a decision on its participation at the women’s Euros, which open in July in England. Now, with the event approaching and many countries on record saying they would not play against a Russian team, it was left with little choice.Portugal will replace Russia at the European Championship, taking its place in a group that includes two of the tournament favorites — the Netherlands and Sweden — as well as Switzerland. Russia had defeated Portugal in a playoff to qualify for the event.Several international sports leagues and organizations have dropped Russia and Russian athletes from competition since the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February, in sports as varied as tennis, soccer, auto racing and track and field. Last week, Russia was stripped of the hosting rights for next year’s world ice hockey championships.Russia has vowed to fight some of the punishment against its teams and athletes at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, the body responsible for adjudicating disputes in sports. (It has nearly a dozen complaints filed with the court already.) And not everyone has agreed with blanket bans on Russian athletes.After Wimbledon, under pressure from the British government, confirmed that it would not allow Russian and Belarusian players to participate in the grass-court tennis tournament this summer, the governing bodies for the men’s and women’s tours both expressed concern about the decision.The ATP, which runs the men’s tour, called it “unfair” and said it had “the potential to set a damaging precedent for the game.”The WTA, which oversees the women’s tour, said: “Individual athletes should not be penalized or prevented from competing due to where they are from or the decisions made by the governments of their countries. Discrimination, and the decision to focus such discrimination against athletes competing on their own as individuals, is neither fair nor justified.”On Sunday, the top men’s players Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal added their voices to the criticism.“It’s not their fault what’s happening in this moment with the war,” Nadal, a 21-time Grand Slam winner, said in Spain, calling some of the affected players “my Russian teammates, my colleagues.”“I’m sorry for them,” Nadal said. “Wimbledon just took their decision. The government didn’t force them to do it.” More

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      Russian Court Extends Brittney Griner’s Detention

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      A Russian court has extended the detention of the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner to May 19, the Russian news agency Tass reported on Thursday, adding tension to the most dangerous moment in U.S.-Russia relations since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.Ms. Griner, 31, a seven-time W.N.B.A. All-Star center for the Phoenix Mercury, is being held on drug charges that could carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.The Russian Federal Customs Service said earlier this month that its officials had detained the American basketball player after they found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow in February. They did not immediately release the name of Ms. Griner, who was later identified by Tass.Ms. Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, is one of several W.N.B.A. players who compete on international women’s teams in the off-season to supplement paychecks that are a fraction of their counterparts’ salaries in the N.B.A. She has played for the Russian team, UMMC Ekaterinburg, since 2014.Representative Colin Allred, Democrat of Texas, told The New York Times last week that Ms. Griner, a Texas native, had been detained on Feb. 17 and that he was working with the State Department to have her released. Russian authorities have so far denied the State Department’s request for a meeting between consular officials and Ms. Griner, Mr. Allred said.American officials, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, have said that certain details surrounding Ms. Griner’s detention could not be disclosed due to privacy constraints.Since she was detained, family and friends of Ms. Griner have come forward to express their shared desire to get her home safely.Ms. Griner’s wife, Cherelle T. Griner, said in an Instagram post last week, “We love you babe!” and “There are no words to express this pain.”The State Department has advised all U.S. citizens in Russia to leave the country and has warned that the U.S. Embassy in Moscow has “severe limitations” on its ability to provide assistance to Americans there. The W.N.B.A. said on Mar. 5 that all of its other players in Ukraine and Russia had left those countries. More

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      in Tennis

      At Indian Wells, Ukrainian Tennis Stars Take Their Fight to the Court

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      Playing through fear of the war, Marta Kostyuk said that she must show “what it’s like having a Ukrainian heart” and that it “hurts” to see Russian players at the tournament.INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — The Ukrainian teenager Marta Kostyuk and the Belgian veteran Maryna Zanevska played for more than three hours in the sun and a swirling wind.They played through pain and concern about issues much larger than tennis, and when they met on the same side of the net after Kostyuk’s victory, 6-7 (5), 7-6 (6), 7-5, in the opening round on Thursday, they shared a long, tearful embrace and a similar message.“I told her that everything is going to be all right,” Zanevska said.“I told her that everything is going to be OK, that our parents are going to be OK,” Kostyuk said.Indian Wells is a 10-hour time change and more than 6,000 miles away from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, where Kostyuk was born, and from the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, where Zanevska was born before immigrating to Belgium in her teens and leaving her relatives behind.But Ukraine’s war with Russia, now into its third week, still feels inescapably close to the Ukrainian players competing at the BNP Paribas Open.“It’s just terrifying,” said Kostyuk, 19, one of tennis’s brightest young talents. “Especially in the beginning, the first couple days, my whole family was there. They were all in one house, so if anything was about to happen, I would lose the whole family. So, thinking of it is just you go to sleep and you don’t know if you wake up the next morning having the family.”She continued: “I’m coping the way I’ve been coping. Everyone is different. I chose to fight. I came here. At the beginning, I was feeling guilty that I’m not there. You know, the whole family is there but not me. I was feeling guilty that I’m playing tennis, that I have the sky above me that is blue and bright and very calm and mixed feelings. But you can’t be in this position, because everyone is fighting how they can fight, and my job is to play tennis, and this is the biggest way I can help in the current situation.”Daniil Medvedev of Russia, left, with another Russian player, Karen Khachanov, at Indian Wells this week.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesRussian players are in Indian Wells, too, but while Kostyuk played with Ukraine next to her name in the draw and on the scoreboard, the Russians and the Belarusian athletes, whose country has cooperated with Russia’s attack on Ukraine, are playing without national symbols or identification, as mandated by the men’s and women’s tours.Ukraine’s biggest tennis star, Elina Svitolina, lobbied successfully for that policy before she agreed to play Russia’s Anastasia Potapova in a match at the tournament in Monterrey, Mexico, earlier this month. But Kostyuk believes Russian players should be barred from competing on tour altogether, even as individuals.“I don’t agree with the action that has been taken,” she said. “Look at the other sports. Look at the big sports, what they did.”Russian and Belarusian athletes were banned from the Paralympics in Beijing, and Russian national teams and clubs have been banned from major global sports like soccer and basketball. But though Russian and Belarusian track and field athletes have been barred from major competitions like this year’s world outdoor championships in Eugene, Ore., individual Russian athletes are still allowed to compete internationally for their non-Russian clubs in, for example, European soccer leagues and the N.H.L.Daniil Medvedev, the Russian men’s star who recently displaced Novak Djokovic atop the rankings, acknowledged that “there is always a possibility” that Russian tennis players could be banned altogether.“We never know,” Medvedev said in Indian Wells on Wednesday. “The way the situation is evolving in other sports, some sports made this decision, especially the team sports.”But for now, tennis has taken a comparatively moderate approach, although this year’s men’s and women’s tour events in Moscow have been canceled and Russian teams have been barred from the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup.“I do feel really sorry that the Russian players have to go through this, but the Ukrainian people are going through much worse things,” Maryna Zanevska said.Clive Brunskill/Getty Images“It’s a very tricky thing because I see that all other sports are removing Russians from their competitions,” Zanevska said. “And in the tennis community they did a few steps like removing the flag, and I can imagine it’s tough for the Russian players as well. But really unfortunately, Ukraine needs support as much as possible from all over the world, all the communities, all the types of sports. It counts. I do feel really sorry that the Russian players have to go through this, but the Ukrainian people are going through much worse things.”The Russian star Andrey Rublev wrote “No war please” on the camera in Dubai last month, and others like Medvedev and the Belarusian women’s stars Victoria Azarenka and Aryna Sabalenka have called for “peace.” But Kostyuk, whose yellow-and-blue tennis outfit here matches the colors of Ukraine’s flag, said she did not like such vague appeals.“For me ‘No war’ means a lot of things,” she said. “No war? We can stop the war by giving up, but I know this was never an option.”She added: “These ‘No war’ statements, they hurt me — they hurt me because they have no substance.”Such sentiments are, nonetheless, too strong for the tournament organizers here. On Thursday, as Kostyuk and Zanevska played in Stadium 6, Wilfred Williams and Mary Beth Williams, American fans, held up a homemade banner that featured two Ukrainian flags and two messages written in Russian: the word “war” with a diagonal line through it and “Let’s go!”After the match, a tournament official told the Williamses, who are siblings, that they could not continue to display the banner. The BNP Paribas Open does not allow politically oriented signs, although national flags are permitted, and the tournament, in a show of support, has placed Ukrainian flags in its two main stadiums.“We just love peace and love tennis,” Mary Beth Williams said.Ukraine’s biggest tennis star, Elina Svitolina, at the Monterrey Open last month.Daniel Becerril/ReutersKostyuk said she had been in Kyiv in late 2013 and early 2014 when a series of protests led to the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s pro-Russia president who later fled the country.“I remember how united everyone was and I remember that we changed the government, and the fact that the guy decided that he thought that finally after eight years we would want to join him, I think, is a very big mistake,” Kostyuk said, referring to Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s president.Both Kostyuk and Zanevska, whose parents remain in Odessa, said they were disappointed that Russian players had not expressed regret for the invasion to them directly.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4On the ground. More

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      Roman Abramovich, Owner of Chelsea FC, Has Assets Frozen By Britain

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      The Premier League club will be allowed to continue operating, but it cannot sell tickets or merchandise and is blocked from buying or selling players.LONDON — For Chelsea F.C.’s players and coaches, the first snippets of information arrived in the text messages and news alerts that pinged their cellphones as they made their way to a private terminal at London’s Gatwick Airport on Thursday morning.The British government had frozen the assets of their team’s Russian owner, Roman Abramovich, as part of a wider set of sanctions announced against a group of Russian oligarchs. The action, part of the government’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was designed to punish a handful of individuals whose businesses, wealth and connections are closely associated with the Kremlin. Abramovich, the British government said, has enjoyed a “close relationship” with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, for decades.The order applied to all of Abramovich’s businesses, properties and holdings, but its most consequential — and most high-profile — effect hit Chelsea, the reigning European soccer champion, which was at that very moment beginning its journey to a Thursday night Premier League match at Norwich City.News reports and government statements slowly filled in some of the gaps: Abramovich’s plans to sell the team were now untenable, and on hold; the club was forbidden from selling tickets or merchandise, lest any of the money feed back to its owner; and the team was prohibited — for the moment — from acquiring or selling players in soccer’s multibillion-dollar trading market.And hour by nervous hour, one more thing became clear: Chelsea, one of Europe’s leading teams and a contender for another Champions League title this season, was suddenly facing a worrisome future marked by austerity, uncertainty and decay.Even as it announced its actions against Abramovich and six other Russian oligarchs, the government said it had taken steps to ensure Chelsea would be able to continue its operations and complete its season. To protect the club’s interests, the government said, it had issued Chelsea a license allowing it to continue its soccer-related activities.The license, which the government said would be under “constant review,” will ensure that the team’s players and staff will continue to be paid; that fans holding season tickets can continue to attend games; and that the integrity of the Premier League, which is considered an important cultural asset and one of Britain’s most high-profile exports, will not be affected.But the sanctions will put a stranglehold on Chelsea’s spending and seriously undermine its ability to operate at the levels it has for the past two decades.By Thursday, the effort to ensure that no money flows to Abramovich was playing out in ways large and small. The telecommunications company Three suspended its jersey sponsorship — a lucrative revenue stream — and asked that its logo be removed from Chelsea’s uniforms and its stadium.At a club-owned hotel near the team’s Stamford Bridge stadium, the front desk stopped booking rooms and the restaurant shut down food and beverage service. Around the corner, at the official Chelsea team store, business continued as usual until security officials abruptly closed the shop. Shoppers, who had been filling baskets with club merchandise, were told to put everything back and leave.Moments later, signs were taped to the locked entrances. “Due to the latest government announcement this store will be closed today until further notice,” they read.Security guards closed Chelsea’s team store and blocked entrances to its stadium on Thursday.Hannah Mckay/ReutersAn uncertain future awaits, with the sanctions affecting everything from the money Chelsea spends on travel to how it dispenses the tens of millions of dollars it receives from television broadcasters.Chelsea acknowledged its new reality in a statement, but suggested it intended to immediately enter into discussions with the government about the scope of the license the team had been granted. “This will include,” the team said, “seeking permission for the license to be amended in order to allow the club to operate as normal as possible.”At the club on Thursday morning, staff members were struggling to come to terms with what the government’s actions would mean for them, their jobs and the team. Many club officials, including Chelsea’s coach, Thomas Tuchel, a German, and Abramovich’s chief lieutenant, the club director Marina Granovskaia, were still trying to understand what they could and could not do.One major deal is off the table: The freezing of Abramovich’s assets makes it impossible — at least in the short term — for him to follow through on his announced plans to sell Chelsea. Under the new arrangement, the British government will have oversight of that process. And while it said it would not necessarily block a sale, the effect would be to heavily diminish any proposed sale price, and the proceeds “could not go to the sanctioned individual while he is subject to sanctions” — leaving Abramovich little incentive to move forward.Whatever happens next, nothing will be the same at Chelsea. Since Abramovich arrived as a little-known Russian businessman in 2003, he has lavished more money on buying talent than almost any other club owner in soccer history, with Chelsea’s constant flow of players and coaches in and out of the club being a hallmark of his years in charge. In the minutes after the sanctions were announced, though, it quickly became apparent that Chelsea would cease to be a player in the multibillion-dollar player trading market, unable to acquire new talent, to sell any of its current players and, without Abramovich’s regular infusions of his personal fortune, to continue to pay the huge salaries of the players it currently employs.The American Christian Pulisic and other Chelsea players now face an uncertain future.Toby Melville/ReutersFor Chelsea fans, too, there was confusion about how and when they could attend games. While season tickets will remain valid, any new sales are prohibited, including to away matches and, crucially, any future Champions League games should the team advance to the later rounds of the competition. Chelsea’s next Champions League game, at the French champion Lille, is set for Wednesday; a berth in the quarterfinals is at stake.That trip and any future travel outside London will now be carefully scrutinized after the government announced a per-game limit of 20,000 pounds (about $26,000) in travel expenses. Those penalties might have been among the discussion points as Chelsea’s players and staff members traveled to the private terminal at Gatwick Airport, south of London, to board a chartered jet for the short flight to Norwich.By then, Tuchel’s phone was buzzing. Tuchel, the coach who last week responded angrily to a stream of questions about Abramovich and Ukraine at a news conference, probably knew little more than those who were peppering him with questions.On Thursday, he would have been trying to focus on the trip to Norwich City, where his team won, 3-1, and on the one that will follow on Sunday, Chelsea’s first home game since its world turned upside down.At that game, perhaps for the final time in months, Chelsea will play in front of a full house. A sign attached to the entrance of Stamford Bridge said as much on Thursday: The home game against Newcastle United is sold out. More

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      Brittney Griner’s WNBA Impact Is Clear As Fans Await Word from Russia

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      Griner, one of the world’s best basketball players, was believed to have been detained in Russia on what customs officials described as drug charges. Fans are worried.When Brittney Griner is on the basketball court, everyone knows. At 6-foot-9, she towers over most other players. She snatches rebounds over her opponents’ outstretched arms, and her teammates know the surest way to score: Deliver the ball to her.Since the Phoenix Mercury drafted Griner No. 1 overall in 2013, she has become one of the most dominant players ever: a seven-time All-Star, a W.N.B.A. champion and a two-time Olympian with matching gold medals.But now Griner, 31, has become entangled in a geopolitical quandary. Instead of preparing for the W.N.B.A. season that’s less than two months away, she is believed to be detained in Russia on what customs officials described as drug charges, with little word on her case or her well-being during the war in Ukraine.“With all the problems with Russia and them attacking Ukraine, has Brittney become a political bargaining chip?” said Debbie Jackson, Griner’s high school basketball coach. “Is this part of politics? So much of it doesn’t make any sense to me that I find it hard to believe that this is really the true thing that happened.”Griner was in Russia playing for a professional basketball league, a common off-season practice for W.N.B.A. players, who can earn salaries in overseas leagues well beyond what their American teams pay. The date and circumstances of Griner’s potential detention were not known, and the W.N.B.A. said all of its players except for Griner were out of the country by Saturday.Griner is said to be facing up to 10 years in prison if convicted on the drug charges, based on accusations that she had vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The Russian authorities, who said Saturday that they had detained an American athlete on these drug charges, did not name Griner, but the Russian news agency Tass did.On Monday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said she had seen reports about Griner but that federal privacy law prevented the U.S. government from discussing a person’s detention without their written consent. American officials have repeatedly accused Russia of detaining U.S. citizens on pretexts.Representatives for Griner have declined to comment on Griner’s status beyond a statement that they were working to get her back to the United States. The uncertainty has caused an outpouring among fans and supporters of Griner, a groundbreaking player known for her unmatched blitz of dunks and her standing as one of the most prominent gay athletes.A congresswoman in Houston, Griner’s hometown, has demanded her release. W.N.B.A. players have posted “Free Brittney” messages on Twitter.“There are no words to express this pain,” Brittney’s wife, Cherelle Griner, wrote on Monday in an Instagram post addressed to Brittney. “I’m hurting, we’re hurting. We await the day to love on you as a family.”‘Nobody can do what she can do’Griner (42) during the 2012 N.C.A.A. national championship game against Notre Dame. Griner played for Baylor for four seasons.Justin Edmonds/Getty ImagesGriner was a 5-foot-8 freshman on the volleyball team at Nimitz High School in Houston when Jackson approached her about playing basketball.Griner initially laughed at the thought of trying out for a sport she’d never played and knew little about. But she quickly fell in love with it, Jackson said. It helped that she grew nearly a foot, to 6 feet 7 inches tall, by her senior year.“She wasn’t like a clumsy tall person that had to grow into her body,” Jackson said. “She was really quite gifted as far as coordination.”Griner earned a basketball scholarship to Baylor University, where for four years she performed with a combination of size, skill, fluidity and speed unlike any other women’s basketball player in the country. She could score at will under the basket, and highlight-reel dunks made her mesmerizing.“Nobody can do what she can do,” Nancy Lieberman, the first woman to play on a professional men’s team, said during Griner’s freshman season at Baylor. “Not Cheryl Miller. Not Lisa Leslie. Not Candace Parker.”Griner led Baylor to an undefeated record during the 2011-12 season, which the Bears capped with a win over Notre Dame in the national championship game. She won the Big 12 Player of the Year Award three times and made 18 dunks at Baylor. Before her, few women had dunked in a college game at all.‘She was absolutely a force’Griner has been one of the W.N.B.A.’s best scorers throughout her career. She averaged 20.5 points per game in the 2021 season.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesThe Mercury drafted Griner in 2013, in the hope that she would rejuvenate their franchise. The turnaround was swift with Griner playing alongside Diana Taurasi, the W.N.B.A.’s career scoring leader. The Mercury made the playoffs during Griner’s rookie season and won a championship in her second. Last season, she was key to the Mercury’s run to the W.N.B.A. finals, where they lost to the Chicago Sky.“In terms of talent, she was absolutely a force and continues to be a force,” said Pamela Wheeler, a former head of the W.N.B.A. players’ union. “I think that everyone was looking for her to help guide the league, which she did, into a new era.”The year Griner was drafted, the league rebranded, changing its logo and focusing on promoting three rookies: Griner, Skylar Diggins-Smith and Elena Delle Donne.Griner seemed to be a good fit, with an engaging personality, a willingness to laugh at herself and a passion for calling out bullying. She was also open about being gay, which has become more common in sports, in part because of her.“I’m up for the challenge,” Griner said at the time about being part of the rebranding. “I changed stuff in college basketball, I guess you could say, so I’m up for it. I never shy from anything. Whatever’s thrown at me, I’m ready for it.”As she elevated her game domestically, Griner also made a name for herself in international basketball. She won two Olympic gold medals with the United States women’s national team, in 2016 and 2021, and started playing for teams in Russia and China during W.N.B.A. off-seasons.‘For the money’ and ‘For the love of the game’Griner has played for UMMC Ekaterinburg, a professional women’s basketball team in Russia, for several years during the W.N.B.A. off-season.Erdem Sahin/EPA, via ShutterstockNearly half of the W.N.B.A.’s 144 players were believed to be playing for international teams this off-season, including more than a dozen in Russia and Ukraine. Griner has played for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg for several years.“While a number of players are doing it for the money as well,” said Wheeler, the former union leader, “they’re also doing it for the love of the game and continuing to be able to play and continue to keep themselves in playing shape.”The maximum base salary for W.N.B.A. players is about $228,000, but international teams have been known to pay several hundred thousand dollars, and even more than $1 million. Griner is set to earn just under the W.N.B.A. max in the 2022 season. With the W.N.B.A.’s minimum salary around $60,000, many players earn the bulk of their income by playing abroad.But playing overseas is not a “tourist opportunity” for most players, said Courtney Cox, an assistant professor at the University of Oregon, who said she traveled to Russia in 2018 to do research for a book about women’s professional basketball around the world.“There’s this whisper network of where is it safe to play, where players are sharing information: where you get paid on time, where they look out for you, the better trainers, all this information,” Cox said. “There’s kind of a trauma bond, I think, that happens, when you play in some of these spaces where you might be one of the only American players, depending on the policies of the league.”After Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, W.N.B.A. players in both countries fled.‘She pushes back on gender roles’Griner kissed her wife, Cherelle Griner, in the stands after the Mercury defeated the Las Vegas Aces in the semifinals of the 2021 W.N.B.A. playoffs.Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesPlaying in the United States can come with its own issues. In her memoir “In My Skin,” Griner wrote about her time at Baylor, a Baptist-­affiliated school that had an official policy against homosexuality at the time. In the book, Griner said that Kim Mulkey, her coach, had warned Griner to “keep your business behind closed doors” and told her to cover her tattoos and delete social media posts about her girlfriend and L.G.B.T. issues.What to Know About Brittney Griner’s Detention in RussiaCard 1 of 4What happened? More

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      Russia Says It Has American Basketball Player in Custody

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      The Russian Federal Customs Service said that its officials had detained an American basketball player after finding vape cartridges that contained hashish oil in her luggage at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow.The Customs Service said in a statement that the player had won two Olympic gold medals with the United States, but it did not release the player’s name. The Russian news agency TASS, citing a law enforcement source, identified the player as Brittney Griner, a seven-time W.N.B.A. All-Star center for the Phoenix Mercury. Griner won gold medals with the U.S. women’s national basketball team in 2021 and 2016.The Customs Service released a video of a traveler at the airport that appeared to be the 31-year-old Griner, wearing a mask and black sweatshirt, going through security. The video showed an individual removing a package from the traveler’s bag.According to the statement, a criminal case has been opened into the large-scale transportation of drugs, which can carry a sentence of up to 10 years behind bars in Russia. The basketball player was taken into custody while the investigation is ongoing, the officials said.Griner’s agent and spokespeople for the W.N.B.A. and the Phoenix Mercury did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The detainment comes amid the escalating conflict created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and high tensions between Russia and the United States. In recent years, Russia has been detaining and sentencing American citizens on what United States officials often say are trumped-up charges. The arrest of a high-profile American could be seen as Russia attempting to create leverage for a potential prisoner exchange with the American government.Many W.N.B.A. players compete in Russia, where salaries are more lucrative, during the American league’s off-season. Griner has played for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg for several years.Some American players began making plans to leave Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.“The few W.N.B.A. players who were competing this off-season in Ukraine are no longer in the country,” the W.N.B.A. told ESPN in a statement this week. “The league has also been in contact with W.N.B.A. players who are in Russia, either directly or through their agents. We will continue to closely monitor the situation.” More

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      Chelsea Is for Sale as Pressure on Roman Abramovich Mounts

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      As British lawmakers take aim at wealthy Russians, Roman Abramovich confirmed he was seeking to sell the Premier League team he has owned since 2003.LONDON — Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch whose vast fortune transformed Chelsea into a global soccer powerhouse, confirmed Wednesday that he is actively seeking to sell the team. He has set a deadline of Friday for interested parties to submit “indicative offers” for the club he has owned for almost two decades, and is said to be seeking at least $2.5 billion for the club.Only days ago, Abramovich, 55, had announced his intention to transfer the “stewardship and care” of Chelsea to members of its charitable foundation. The move — in which he notably did not suggest he would surrender ownership of Chelsea — was seemingly designed to distance the club from the impact of any possible sanctions levied by the British government against him as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Britain this week proposed new legislation targeting wealthy Russians like Abramovich, many of whom amassed their fortunes through cronyism or ties to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and then shielded it overseas behind shell companies and opaque investment deals.But on Wednesday, in confirming his decision to sell the team, Abramovich framed the sale as a painful and personal sacrifice, but one from which he would not profit. Abramovich said he would not seek the repayment of the roughly $2 billion of his personal fortune he had invested in Chelsea over the two decades he had owned it, and also said he had instructed his representatives to set up a charitable foundation to receive the net proceeds of the sale “for the benefit of all victims of the war in Ukraine.”The comments about Ukraine were his strongest yet addressing the impact of Russia’s invasion, and its effects on its neighbor and its residents. His words, however, stopped short of condemning President Putin, or Russia, for launching military action.“Please know that this has been an incredibly difficult decision to make, and it pains me to part with the club in this manner,” Abramovich said. “However, I do believe this is in the best interest of the club.”Though Abramovich had suggested in a rare public statement on Saturday that the Chelsea foundation trustees were best placed to “look after the interests of the club, players, staff and fans,” he has in recent days tasked the Raine Group, a New York advisory firm, with identifying a new owner for the team. Prospective investors have been informed they must have prepared an outline of their bid by the end of this week.Their number includes Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire noted for his support for progressive causes, who told the Swiss newspaper Blick that he was among a group of four people to have “received an offer to buy Chelsea” on Tuesday. Wyss insisted that he would not buy the club alone, and would prefer to be a part of a consortium of “six or seven investors.”“Abramovich is trying to sell all his villas in England; he also wants to get rid of Chelsea quickly,” Wyss told Blick. “Abramovich is currently asking far too much. You know, Chelsea owe him £2 billion. But Chelsea has no money. As of today, we don’t know the exact selling price.”Abramovich’s wealth has produced five Premier League titles, two Champions League crowns and a talent-rich roster to rival any club in the world.David Klein/ReutersAnother contender, Todd Boehly, a billionaire investor and a part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, reportedly offered Abramovich $2.9 billion for Chelsea in 2019. The current price is believed to be around $2.5 billion, though there is speculation that it will fall lower still if Abramovich’s urgency to part with the team grows.Chelsea had been directing interested parties toward Raine whenever groups attracted by the glamour of owning the London team made contact. But until this week, Abramovich had shown little appetite for selling.That has changed with notable speed. Abramovich has been named on several occasions as a suitable target for sanctions in Britain’s parliament since Putin commanded Russian forces to attack Ukraine last week.Chris Bryant, a lawmaker for the opposition Labour party, this week claimed that Abramovich was hastily trying to sell off his British property portfolio in anticipation of his assets being frozen, and asked if he should be allowed to continue owning a soccer team. On Wednesday, Keir Starmer, the Labour party leader, directly asked the prime minister, Boris Johnson, why Abramovich had not yet been targeted.Abramovich has always claimed, often with the support of lawyers, that he has no connection to Putin and nothing to do with politics. On Monday, his private representative was reported to have suggested — without evidence — that he had been asked to try to negotiate a peace settlement in Ukraine. The comments came only days after officials close to Abramovich suggested the billionaire had no role in politics or close ties to Putin.Abramovich has owned Chelsea since 2003, having bought the team seemingly on a whim — negotiations, the story went, took place over a single weekend — and for reasons that have remained opaque. He had previously considered moves for Arsenal, Tottenham and Fulham, as well as examining the possibility of buying teams in Spain and Italy, but why he settled on soccer at all has never been adequately explained. Abramovich does not give interviews.He arrived at Chelsea when it was at a comparatively low ebb, struggling to qualify for the Champions League and without a domestic championship in half a century. But the infusion of his personal fortune, amassed through his stake in the Russian oil giant Sibneft and his interests in the country’s aluminum industry, changed that almost immediately.Abramovich bankrolled some of the most lavish spending in soccer history, attracting a rotating cast of stars to Stamford Bridge and kick-starting a decades-long inflationary spiral that only a handful of other clubs have been able to match. Under his ownership, Chelsea has won five Premier League titles, two Champions League crowns — most recently last May — and, only a few weeks ago, the Club World Cup.Roman Abramovich turned up in Abu Dhabi in February to watch Chelsea win the Club World Cup.Hassan Ammar/Associated PressHe was on the field last May in Portugal, too, after Chelsea won the Champions League.Pool photo by Michael Steele/EPA, via ShutterstockAbramovich, who has rarely seen his team in England over the last few years after withdrawing his application for a British visa in 2018, joined his players on the field in Abu Dhabi to celebrate their most recent trophy, just as he had when it won the European title in Portugal last May.The team’s most recent accounts provided a clear illustration of how Abramovich’s wealth has been able to subsidize huge losses in order to keep the team successful: Chelsea lost more than $200 million on its way to that second Champions League title last season. Abramovich is estimated to have invested something in the region of $2 billion in the club — interest-free loans worth about 10 times the price he paid for the team — since acquiring it in 2003.His announcement on Saturday that he intended to hand the “care” of Chelsea to the trustees of its charitable arm indicated that he was sufficiently worried by the prospect of the freezing of his assets in Britain to try to limit its impact on the club. The move was so surprising to those trustees that several are believed to have expressed their concerns to the Charity Commission, Britain’s charity regulator, which confirmed that it had opened a “serious incident report” in the aftermath of Abramovich’s unilateral announcement. Staff members are similarly bewildered at the pace of events.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4A new diplomatic push. More