Griner’s Phoenix Mercury teammates, meanwhile, honored their star center with a 42-second moment of silence before their game against the Connecticut Sun on Thursday night.
Players from both teams linked arms during the pregame ceremony — and at the tail-end of it all, an arena-wide “Bring Her Home!” chant broke out.
Griner will have the opportunity to appeal her sentence — though in all likelihood, her only way of getting out of Russia before the end of the 9-year sentence is through a prisoner trade.