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Brittney Griner's Russian team — owned by a Putin-aligned oligarch — is a hot spot for WNBA superstars

Mar 8, 2022, 22:29 IST
Insider
Brittney Griner (right) competes for Russian club UMMC Ekaterinburg during the WNBA offseason.BSR Agency/Getty Images
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WNBA superstar Brittney Griner has been detained in Russia after officials at a Moscow airport reportedly found vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage.

For many, the circumstances surrounding the 6-foot-9 American's arrest — and her decision to head over to Russia amidst escalating tensions between the Kremlin and the US government — have been something of a mystery. But in the world of professional women's basketball, Griner's trip abroad was not the least bit surprising.

The two-time Olympic gold medalist was headed to Russia for her second job.

Griner.AP Photo/Rick Scuteri

Griner has competed for European powerhouse club UMMC Ekaterinburg during each WNBA off-season since 2014, and she's far from the only star who leads this dual-season lifestyle. Roughly half of the WNBA's players — including WNBA superstars Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, and Candace Parker — take their talents overseas to supplement the relatively modest incomes they earn in domestic leagues.

"The only reason you go there is for money," Taurasi, the WNBA's all-time leading scorer, said on an ESPN 30 For 30 podcast that aired in 2020. "That is the only reason you leave your country to go to a different country to play basketball."

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Coincidentally, nations with fraught relationships to the US are often the ones that offer the most to America's brightest women's basketball talents. On teams in Russia and China, players command significantly higher salaries than they earn in the WNBA, where the average salary last season was $120,648, the maximum base salary was $221,450, and the top players were eligible to earn roughly $500,000 with bonuses and marketing opportunities factored in.

Griner (left) plays for the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury.AP Photo/Ralph Freso

Griner herself reportedly earns $1 million per season — more than four times her 2022 Phoenix Mercury base salary — with UMMC Ekaterinburg, which is bankrolled by a Russian mining corporation and its billionaire owner, Iskander Makhmudov.

Slava Malamud, a former sports journalist for a leading national outlet in Russia, told Insider that Makhmudov and fellow owners like him "can spend anything they want on the team," so they do.

Players receive top-notch treatment the likes of which they could only imagine stateside, as detailed in a 2016 feature written by then-ESPN reporter Kate Fagan. The team takes charter flights to away games and stays at luxury hotels during trips out of town. When they're home, players have bottled water delivered to their doorsteps. They're each even provided with their own personal driver to help them navigate the city.

Griner (right) and her UMMC Ekaterinburg teammates celebrate winning the EuroLeague.REUTERS/Murad Sezer

Compared to the commercial flights and mediocre accommodations they receive while playing in the WNBA, UMMC treats Griner and company like royalty. It's no wonder that several of the league's top players — including Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones, Allie Quigley, Courtney Vandersloot, and Emma Meesseman — join Griner in the freezing cold Ural town each winter.

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But the return on UMMC's massive investment in its women's basketball team — aside from 15 Russian Premier League championships and six EuroLeague titles — isn't immediately apparent. In Russia, Malamud explains, "following women's basketball is not considered to be a cool thing you do," especially considering "sports-following [in the country] tends to be a bit of a men's pursuit and men... tend to be misogynistic to quite an appalling degree."

Though the team likely sells out most of its home games, as Ekaterinburg locals only have a mediocre hockey team and a soccer club that's consistently fighting off relegation to root for, ticket sales at UMMC Ekaterinburg's 5,000-person arena at the Palace of Sporting Games aren't nearly enough cover the exorbitant costs associated with chartered jets and private drivers.

Griner (left) plays for the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury.AP Photo/Ralph Freso

Why, then, would Makhmudov pay top dollar to lure the world's best women's basketball players halfway across the world to a city with "a reputation, overall appearance, and mystique" Malamud likens to Buffalo or 1970s Pittsburgh?

Women's basketball has historically been a source of athletic pride for Russia; the former Soviet Union won Olympic gold medals in 1976 (defeating the US) and 1980 (with Team USA boycotting). But University of California, San Diego Professor Robert Edelman — an expert in Russian history and the history of sports — told Insider it is more likely a form of "window dressing" consistent with the role of women's sports before the fall of the Soviet Union.

"Historically that's been one of the deceptive aspects of Soviet sport, and now Russian sport," Edelman explained. "Women's athletes were a visible, important part [of sports]... to try to convince the outside world that they'd overcome patriarchy. But, in fact, they hadn't."

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Griner (right) takes a shot in front of a large crowd at UMMC Ekaterinburg's Palace of Sporting Games.Konstantin Melnitskiy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

"After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rampant male chauvinism that was part of that culture came roaring back," he added.

Makhmudov — who is considered a Russian oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin — "absolutely" could be employing that same strategy to win over business leaders across Europe and the West, Edelman confirmed.

Malamud, meanwhile, thinks Makhmudov's investment in women's basketball may have more of a local focus. Buying UMMC Ekateringburg and turning it into a women's basketball juggernaut may have been the Uzbek-born Russian businessman's attempt "to endear himself to the population" of Russia's fourth-largest city.

UMMC owner and Russian oligarch Iskander Makhmudov.DMITRY DUKHANIN/KOMMERSANT/AFP via Getty Images

"The entire roster's salaries are probably pocket change to him," Malamud said of Makhmudov. "I mean, even if [the people] don't really care about women basketball, the fact that their team won six EuroLeague titles is something that they're proud of."

Plus, the team serves as a marketing tool for Makhmudov's UMMC — short for Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company. As the team travels across Europe and dominates its opponents with six WNBA All-Stars at its disposal, Russia's second-largest copper mining company gets some bonus name recognition.

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"This is like the only reason this company is known outside of metallurgical and mining circles," Malamud notes. "The fact [is] that their name is out there in [connection] with that team."

As for whether someone with as much money, power, and political sway as Makhmudov has possesses the means to help free one of his superstars from Russian prison, it depends.

"If it's just federal criminal authorities who are holding her purely because she had that vape on her, I'm sure it can be all decided amicably if you pulled some strings," Malamud explained. "But if she is being held as a retaliation to the United States, and it's basically FSB [Russia's Federal Security Service]-slash-Putin's inner circle who is making the decision, then no."

Russian President Vladimir Putin.Alexei Nikolsky/Associated Press

Griner is being held under suspicion of the large-scale transportation of drugs, according to The New York Times. "People in Russia have been detained and given enormous sentences for just having a small amount of marijuana," Malamud added. "They're really, really brutal and medieval about any type of drugs in Russia."

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