'I got very choked up' -WNBA commissioner on Griner's release

STORY: Speaking to reporters in a Zoom press conference, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said that the entire league was relieved.

“I can't tell you… what this means to, I think, the whole WNBA community to have her home safely,” Engelbert said.

Griner would be given medical support but should be given time to reconnect with her family, Englebert said.

The WNBA commissioner said other players in the league were eager to reunite with Griner.

“What they want to do is what we'll try to broker,” she said. “But… let's give Brittney some space and her family. It's been a long ordeal, horrible ordeal.”

Griner, 32, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and star of the Women's National Basketball Association's Phoenix Mercury, was arrested on Feb. 17 at a Moscow airport in February when vape cartridges containing cannabis oil, which is banned in Russia, were found in her luggage. She was sentenced on Aug. 4 to nine years in a penal colony on charges of possessing and smuggling drugs.