N.B.A. Mostly Keeps Low Profile in Public Campaign to Free Brittney Griner
The N.B.A. is a $10 billion corporation that has the power and reach to promote not just its teams and players but to provoke discussion and debate around social issues. It has used that influence most prominently to fight racism in the United States.

Yet when it has come to Brittney Griner, the W.N.B.A. star who has been detained in Russia since February, the N.B.A.’s teams have been mostly absent from the public campaign for her release. The N.B.A. founded the W.N.B.A. and still owns about half of it, but the N.B.A. has been relatively muted outside of news conferences as Griner’s family, her agent and the women’s league and its players have led the public push for her freedom. N.B.A. players have also shown support.

Officials in both leagues said they had stayed quiet at first at the urging of U.S. government officials who worried that publicizing the case would backfire and jeopardize Griner even further. But even after the U.S. State Department said that it had determined she had been “wrongfully detained” and government officials began regularly speaking about Griner, the N.B.A. and team owners remained mostly quiet, fueling sentiments that the case has not gotten the kind of spotlight Griner’s supporters have demanded.