Add Griner to long tiff with Russia

At the height of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan circa 1980, an American sports writer, one whose byline carried clout, called on the United States not to enter the upcoming Moscow Olympics.

Red Smith, then with the New York Times, questioned our country’s wisdom in “playing games with Ivan in Ivan’s backyard.” Jimmy Carter, then in the White House, found that a fair response to Russia’s naked aggression toward another country.

American athletes — gymnasts, weight lifters and basketball players alike — stayed home from Moscow, though the games went on. Not that ploy helped Carter much in that November’s presidential election when the people who chose him over the unelected Gerald Ford in 1976 sent him home to Plains, Georgia, there to live with wife Rosalynn into his 90s.

Ask any American sports fan his favorite athletic moment and he is apt to lead with the Miracle On Ice of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team in Lake Placid, New York. The Moscow games were months off when Herb Brooks’ kids knocked off the Soviet hockey team, then considered the world’s best and with the U.S. given the chance of Rich Strike (80-1 winner) in the last Kentucky Derby.

Whether the Russians panicked midway in the game or were just played off their skates by Mike Eruzione, Jim Craig and their mates is open to debate. Nonetheless, the U.S. played flawless hockey in the decisive third period, skating off the last seconds with a 4-3 victory and ABC sportscaster Al Michaels in career-best form: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”

No matter what you hear to the contrary, that did not come in the gold-medal game but in the semifinals on a Friday in February. The U.S. beat Finland on a Sunday morning in upstate New York for the prize obtained previously, a victory over Russia included, in the 1960 Olympics in Squaw Valley, California.

Our dealings with Russia, as any student of history can attest, are long and complicated. Dancer Rudolf Nureyev made international headlines defecting to the West when the Cold War was raging. American sports fans came to love Russian gymnast Olga Korbut during the 1972 Munich Olympics, though those games produced more earth-shaking headlines. The figure skaters Protopopov, husband and wife, came to symbolize excellence in the sport in the 1960s. However much we might fear the Russians, they were our allies in World War II so a madman would not rule the world, even if Joseph Stalin (in power almost 30 years) was the tradeoff. Whatever they may think of us, American John Reed, whom Warren Beatty played in the self-directed 1981 film “Reds” for which he won his only Oscar, is buried in the Kremlin.

The latest American to figure in this drama is basketball star Brittney Griner, sentenced Thursday to nine years in a Russian prison for bringing cannabis into the country.

Arrested Feb. 17 and pleading guilty July 7, the former Baylor star, currently in the Women’s National Basketball Association, apparently is a chess piece in a high-stakes game. The latest ruling apparently expedites her trip home, which would not come about until her trial was completed and would follow a prisoner swap with Russia.

The sentencing judge fined Griner 1 million rubles (about $16,700) and ruled that time served since her arrest would count toward the sentence. She faced a maximum 10 years in prison with prosecutors asking for 9 1/2 years. Griner’s defense team planned to appeal, the athlete saying she was a victim of “an honest mistake.”

These are complicated times on the world stage. Check out the late Brad Davis in the film “Midnight Express,” for which writer Oliver Stone won an Oscar, to see what can happen to an American caught with drugs overseas. Then again, one wishes American athletes would comport themselves better in another man’s land. That has little to do with whether Brittney Griner ever plays basketball again, or for what team. There is something wrong when a person’s character is determined less on morals than triple-doubles on a scoresheet.

There may be hope for Griner, 31, who has President Joe Biden and a slew of American athletic officials in her corner. Muhammad Ali fought Joe Frazier in 1971 not knowing if he would soon be off to prison five years for dodging the draft. Though Ali lost that battle, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor and he went on to hold the world heavyweight boxing championship three times. In 1996, in the city (Atlanta) he began his boxing comeback after 3 1/2 years away, Ali bore the Olympic torch at the opening ceremonies. And without a dry eye in the house.