Brittney Griner is still fighting to complete her comeback

Well, I am here, as Ms. Griner requested of us. All of us, I may add. Fans, press, patrons and phonies – the entirety, included. Come, now. Don’t make that noise. There’s plenty of room for us in the cold corners of the Crypt.

And anywhere would be a welkin, let Brittney Griner tell it. Anywhere but where she’s been.

It had been some 500 odd days since any of us had seen Griner suit up in uniform, lumber down the hardwood that turned her from a nobody to a supernova and dazzle spectators with a simple flick of the wrist. But in those 500 days or so, Griner’s been to hell and back. Crawled and clawed her way out of the Katabasis to embark, from the city of stars no less, on her own hero’s journey. She was no Odysseus, I assure you. Though, standing across from me, with barely 200 people traipsing around the

Crypt, I could’ve sworn I saw a god with the flicker of the underworld’s blue embers, still trying to figure out how her new normal worked.

There was a time when Griner’s name was the most feared on the planet when it came to hoops. It’s easy to forget with all of the ceremony behind bringing Griner home from the Russian prison that detained her for 10 months. She set high school records for blocks and dunks as a senior. She was sent to counseling in college to learn how to control her anger after taking pride in breaking a girl’s nose on the court. I remember that Griner from Baylor: a punishing center bigger than anyone in the game in college or the pros, who dunked mercilessly and pushed and shoved her way to being the most dominant force in women’s hoops in a generation. She won a national championship, was named the national player of the year and eventually became the