Team USA Olympian Brittney Griner has expressed that she wants her newborn son to call her ‘pops’.
On July 27, the 33-year-old is set to participate in her third consecutive Olympic tournament as the US Women’s Basketball team competes against Japan in the preliminary round of Group C.
In the lead-up to the summer games in Paris, the two-time gold medalist took part in the WNBA All-Star Weekend for Team USA Basketball. During the event, she played 14 minutes and scored 10 points in the team’s 117-109 loss to Team WNBA.
Just days before hitting the court, Griner spoke with CBS Sports’ We Need To Talk anchor Terrika Foster-Brasby, who congratulated her on becoming a mom with her wife Cherelle, 32.
“One other job that you’re about to get into that is really hard and really scary,” the journalist began. “You’re about to be a mom.”
The ten-time WBNA All-Star quickly corrected Foster-Brasby and playfully revealed she would be known as ‘pops’.
“You’re about to be a pops?” queried the anchor before Griner doubled down and said: “Yeah, pops.”
“I’m super excited. I guess I’ll just drop it he’s here,” she continued. “Seven pounds eight ounces. Yeah, that’s my man he is amazing.
“They say as soon as you see them everything that you thought mattered just goes out the window and that’s literally what happened.”
Griner admitted that while it ‘sucks’ to leave her wife of five years and their son behind to play in the Olympics, she was confident that he would ‘understand’.
Earlier this year, the Phoenix Mercury veteran disclosed that she thought she was heading for divorce after being sentenced to nine years in a Russian labor camp in February 2022.
The athlete was initially arrested at Moscow Airport in February 2022 and spent nearly 10 months in the Russian prison system before returning to the United States in December.
“My basketball career would be over. I’d be in my early forties and out of shape, would have to find a new way to provide for my wife,” she wrote in her new memoir, Coming Home. “And Relle. She assured me she’d wait, but ten years was ridiculous.
“I went through so many emotions being locked up, and just thinking about nine years,” she continued.
“We planned on having kids and doing all these amazing things together, and now I’m thinking, ‘Is that going to happen? How can I ask her to wait?’”
However, Cherelle remained faithful, and the pair were reunited following Griner’s release via a prison swap.