Team USA center Brittney Griner (15) high-fives teammate Kelsey Plum (5) during the WNBA All-Star Game against Team WNBA at Footprint Center in Phoenix on July 20, 2024. Photo: Joe Rondone/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK
New parent Brittney Griner has opened up about her experience with new motherhood after the birth of her child. But don’t call her “Mom.”
Griner appeared on CBS Sports’ “We Need to Talk” to discuss her new baby. Host Terrika Foster-Brasby told Griner, “You’re about to be a mom!” Griner corrected her, saying, “Pops, pops!”
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“Oooh, let me get it together! About to be a pops,” Foster-Brasby responded.
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Griner revealed that she and her wife, Cherelle, have already had their son, who was born on July 8, 2024.
“Well, I mean, I guess I’ll just drop it… he’s here. 7/8/24. Seven pounds eight ounces. Yeah, that’s my man,” she said.
“He is amazing.”
Griner said she has loved being a parent so far. “They said as soon as you see them, everything that you thought mattered just goes out the window. That’s literally what happened.”
Griner said that the timing was hard, as she is about to leave and go to Paris for her third Olympic appearance with Team USA.
“It kind of sucks because I have to leave, but at the same time, he will understand,” she said, adding that “my whole phone has turned into him now.”
Though she may want to be called “pops” by her son, Griner addressed her gender identity in a 2015 ESPN interview, where she affirmed that she is a woman.
“‘Yo, she’s a man!’ But hey, that’s my body and I look the way I look,” she said regarding the comments she gets about her body. “People are either going to accept me for who I am or they’re not. I don’t know what people think I’m hiding.”
“I’ve heard, ‘Oh, she’s not a female, she’s a male.’ I’ve been told, ‘Oh, she’s tucking stuff.’ They thought I was tucking. I mean, [in the Body Issue] it’s out there. Let me show that I embrace flatness! I just want people to see somebody who embraces being naked, embraces everything about them being different,” Griner said.
Griner was the subject of a highly-publicized prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia in 2022. Griner was released from jail after nearly 300 days in prison after she was caught with cannabis in her luggage at an airport in Russia.
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