During a press convention in Phoenix, Arizona on Thursday, Brittney Griner informed reporters she wasn’t planning to play abroad once more except she was invited to the Olympics.

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Christian Petersen/Getty Images

During a press convention in Phoenix, Arizona on Thursday, Brittney Griner informed reporters she wasn’t planning to play abroad once more except she was invited to the Olympics.

Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Brittney Griner, the WNBA star who spent 10 months in Russian detention, mentioned her days of enjoying in worldwide leagues are over.

“I’m never going overseas to play again unless I’m representing my country at the Olympics,” she mentioned on Thursday, as a part of her first press conference since she was launched in December. “You know, if I make that team, that would be the only time I would leave the U.S. soil.”

The assembly with nationwide and native press was held to debate Griner’s return to courtroom forward of the upcoming WNBA season with the Phoenix Mercury.

But it was additionally the primary likelihood for a lot of reporters to ask the star middle about being arrested by Russian airport safety on prices of drug smuggling final February. Griner was held in detention for 10 months earlier than the U.S. negotiated her release in trade for convicted arms supplier Viktor Bout.

She took to the stage in Phoenix carrying a black T-shirt with the phrase “bring our families home.”

“Ooh, a little different than a basketball press conference. A lot of media in here,” she mentioned with amusing.

And whereas Griner saved up the sunshine air all through the half-hour session, she could not struggle again tears when the primary reporter requested about how she stayed resilient throughout her imprisonment.

“Just digging deep, honestly,” Griner mentioned. “I know this sounds so small, but, you know, dying in practice and hard workouts. You find a way to just grind it out. Just put your head down and just keep moving forward. You know, you can never stand still.”

She did not share many particulars about her detention, with Mercury employees warning reporters of safety issues. But she did say that, even within the isolation of a international jail, she was conscious of the assist from followers and the push from U.S. officers to convey her house.

“It made me a little bit more comfortable,” she mentioned. “It made me a little bit … have hope, which is a really hard thing to have. It’s a dangerous thing to have. Because, you know, when it doesn’t work, it’s so crushing.”

She and the Mercury might be a part of a marketing campaign this season in assist of different Americans detained abroad, together with former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, whom negotiators tried to incorporate within the swap that introduced Griner house, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained in late March.

But Griner mentioned she’s additionally simply relishing the sensation of getting a basketball again in her hand.

When she takes the courtroom as the brand new season kicks off subsequent month, she hopes that extra folks watch than ever earlier than to facilitate the top of basketball’s gender pay gap.

“I think that’s a big reason why a lot of people go overseas. That’s why I was there,” she mentioned. “As much as I’d love to pay my light bill for a love of the game, I can’t.”

NPR’s Tom Goldman contributed to this report.