Brittney Griner will have one more fan cheering her on this Olympic season.
The WNBA star and her wife, Cherelle, welcomed their first child on July 8, the 33-year-old Griner revealed Friday on the “She Knows Sports” podcast.
“That’s my man,” Griner revealed when asked about her son. “He is amazing. They say as soon as you see him, everything you thought mattered just goes out the window. And that’s literally what happens.”
The two-time gold medalist will be heading to the 2024 Paris Olympics in the coming week.
“Kind of sucks, I got to leave,” Griner added, referring to herself as “Pops.” “But at the same time, he will understand. … My whole phone has turned into him now.”
The couple had initially 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 has averaged 18.6 points, 6.4 rebounds and 1.4 blocks in 15 games for the Phoenix Mercury this season.
The new bliss and successful basketball season follow Griner’s almost yearlong detainment in Russia after being unjustly sentenced to nine years for drug smuggling in 2022.
Griner, who had played in the offseason for a Russian women’s basketball team for years, was arrested at a Moscow airport in February 2022 after authorities found cannabis oil in her luggage.
She later apologized repeatedly and said she had inadvertently packed the less than one 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 moved to a penal colony in Mordovia.
Months of “difficult” negotiations with the Russians culminated in the swap, senior US administration officials said, with it becoming clear only in the weeks leading up to Griner’s release an opening existed to secure the American basketball player’s return.
In December, alongside President Joe Biden, Cherelle Griner thanked the administration for helping secure her wife’s release and said she was “overwhelmed with emotions.”
CNN’s Jennifer Hansler,?Kylie Atwood,?Jeremy Herb,?MJ Lee, Kevin Liptak, Abby Phillip, Rhea Mogul, Elizabeth Wolfe, Anna Chernova, Frederik Pleitgen,?Chris Liakos?and?Tara John contributed to this report.