The Brittney Griner I knew wanted to be invisible. Sadly, that is no longer an option

Brittney Griner dropped her impassive game face, looked at me with big sad eyes and said, “The nightmare for me was definitely feeling like I was forgotten and that I was going to end up alone.”

I no longer saw a superstar. My heart ached for a young person who was an ocean away from everyone she knew. “Got here and I was all alone… I was just like ah, hell no, my life is coming to an end,” she said.

We cannot allow Brittney’s fear of being forgotten, alone and far from home come true.

It was 2014 and we sat in an empty conference room in Hangzhou, China. I’d flown 20 hours from Los Angeles to direct an ESPN documentary about her inaugural season overseas. Fresh out of college, she was drowning in homesickness. She didn’t speak the language and no one on her team spoke English. She didn’t like the food and survived off KFC, Pizza Hut and Skittles. And she spent her waking hours either on the hardwood or in her gray penthouse suite at the Zijingang International Hotel. Imagine all of the melancholy of Lost in Translation and none of the Bill Murray.

She was there for the money. As the No 1 pick in the 2013 WNBA draft, Brittney made $49,000 in her first season for the Phoenix Mercury against the $600,000 she earned with the Zhejiang Golden Bulls. If a women’s basketball player wants to make top dollar, she must go overseas. Half of the WNBA travels to countries like China, Russia, Turkey and France for much higher salaries, which raises the question whether their careers in the US count as their real off-season.

As I rewatch her interview footage today, I’m haunted by the sense that Brittney is talking about her fears not then, but now, from inside a Russian prison cell where she’s been held since 17 February. Again, she’s