The Labors of Brittney

Brittney Griner, Superstar

Our WNBA superstar is back home now. People may be wondering why we traded a Russian gangster for her, but the athletic record speaks for itself. A national treasure by all lights.

National treasure. Hmmm. I looked through her per-game stats (even looked up some of the abbreviations in the interests of thoroughness) and got a thumbnail portrait of a particular kind of player you also see in the NBA. Very tall, lots of field goals, hardly any 3-pointers, decent but not great record on foul shooting, not much for assists, adequate on steals and rebounding, I guess, and reliable on minutes per game and games played. The overall picture? I’m not seeing much that says movement on the court. I’m seeing a tall player stationed near the basket who converts passes from others into 2-point scores, averaging just under 20 points a game, and maybe views the rest of the team as domestic staff. 

Then, me being the way I am, got to wondering about this sport I know next to nothing about. I’ll blame it on my wife. She asked me how much money Brittney makes. So I started looking things up. She and one other member of her team both make $279,000 a year, from which I assume there’s a salary cap. I had heard complaints over the years that WNBA players are resentful about making so much less money than the men, which they very obviously are.

I came up with some facts and rough figures, as well as a useful point of comparison, for the WNBA. They’re not any kind of distaff minor league version of the NBA. They play fewer than half the games in a season that the big guys do, 36 games a year over Brittney’s years in the league versus 82 regular season games by the NBA teams. They play 40 minutes a game versus 48 in the big time. The NBA has 30 teams; the WNBA 12. 

I happen to like watching  women’s college basketball since they started getting smart coaches and more Title IX support, in whichever order those advantages came. I actually prefer the women’s college game to the men’s and to the NBA, both of which are too beholden to tall fetishism, not, I’m thinking, what Abner(?) Naismith had in mind when he started nailing peach baskets to 4x4s in YMCAs and giving schoolboys a new medium for indoor exercise. The college women really do play like teams, running and passing, and passing and running, and you can watch the called plays unfold the way they were drawn on a gymnasium blackboard. When I saw Brittney play at Baylor I felt concern. Is this the direction women’s basketball really wants to go? They’re never going to become reliable slam-dunkers, but some people seem to like the brand of basketball the WNBA is playing.

Not everyone though. They have an attendance problem. Teams average about 5,000 spectators a game, totaling just a tad over a million for the whole league in one season. The NBA draws 20 million a year. Television ratings may be even more lopsided. On average, a WNBA game is watched on TV by about 380,000 fans (that’s down there with CNN ratings). I don’t know the NBA numbers but they’re enough to pay for all those 8- and 9-figure salaries.

Point of comparison that’s not the NBA? Two Triple-A leagues in the MLB domain. There are 30 teams in the majors, 30 in the Triple-A minors. The National and American League teams play 162 games a year; the minors play just 150 games, so their best players can help out the big club in late-season pennant drives. Despite all this seeming similarity, few players make the jump from Triple-A to the Major Leagues. Their pay is accordingly lower. Much much lower. The best Triple-A veterans make considerably less than half what Brittney does in salary, though they play more than three times as many games as a WNBA player does. The International and Pacific Coast Leagues are there because their players love playing baseball; they play to 12 times more fans in a year than the WNBA.

So Brittney’s very very famous and much lionized by the same people who idolize Megan Rapinoe. Famous for being famous in an afterthought athletic conference that draws more publicity than fans. In this context, she actually doesn’t seem worth giving away the store for, does she?

I’ve deliberately avoided mentioning her politics, which seem radical left, and the only reason I’m mentioning them now is to ask how she’s going to feel, fervent gun confiscator that she most probably is, watching the future career of the man her own freedom freed from a massive prison sentence. A person of conscience on either side of the political aisle would be troubled for life by the fact of having played a part in turning this mass murderer loose on the benighted populations of Africa and the Middle East and into the sunrise.

Viktor Bout

What’s his résumé look like? According to Wiki, no right wing org, he’s a monster:

FTA: << Viktor Anatolyevich Bout (/buːt/; Russian: Виктор Анатольевич Бут; born 13 January 1967) is a Russian arms dealer. An entrepreneur and former Soviet military translator, he used his multiple companies to smuggle weapons starting during the collapse of the Soviet Union from Eastern Europeto Africa and the Middle East during the 1990s and early 2000s. Bout gained the nicknames the "Merchant of Death" and "Sanctions Buster" after British government minister Peter Hain read a report to the United Nations in 2003 on Bout's wide-reaching operations, extensive clientele, and willingness to bypass embargoes.

In a U.S. sting operation, Bout was arrested on 6 March 2008 in Thailand on terrorism charges by the Royal Thai Police in cooperation with American authorities and Interpol. The U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Eric G. John requested his extradition under the Extradition Act with Thailand, which was eventually mandated by the Thai High Court in August 2010.

Bout was accused of intending to sell arms to a U.S. DEA informer pretending to represent the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for use against U.S. forces in Colombia, but Bout denied the charges and predicted an acquittal.

On 2 November 2011, Bout was convicted by a jury in a Manhattan federal court of conspiracy to killU.S. citizens and officials, delivery of anti-aircraft missiles, and providing aid to a terrorist organization, and was sentenced to the minimum 25 years' imprisonment because the crime was due to the sting operation. From June 2012 until December 2022, Bout was held at the United States Penitentiary, Marion,[18][19] before being released in a prisoner exchange for U.S. basketball player Brittney Griner.

2000s

After the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan, Bout appeared in Moscow and stated that his aircraft made regular flights to Afghanistan, but continued to deny any contact with al-Qaeda or the Taliban—instead supplying the rebel Northern Alliance.[53] Soon after the beginning of the War in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is said to have moved gold and cash out of Afghanistan.[54] In July 2003, The New York Times interviewed Bout, who stated that "I woke up after Sept. 11 and found I was second only to Osama."

In 2004, Bout and Chichakli set up Samar Airlines in Tajikistan to conduct money laundering activities and protect assets from authorities.[56] Bout is suspected of supplying weapons to numerous armed groups in Africa in the 2000s, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the Second Congo War. He may have employed some 300 people and operated 40 to 60 aircraft.

Bout's network allegedly delivered surface-to-air missiles to Kenya to be used to attack an Israeli airliner during takeoff in 2002.

Bout was reportedly seen meeting with Hezbollah officials in Lebanon during the run-up to the 2006 Lebanon War, while some sources claim he was actually in Russia when the meeting took place.

Records found in Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's former intelligence headquarters in Tripoli, shortly after the overthrow of the Gaddafi government in 2011, indicated that in late September 2003, British intelligence officials told then-Libyan intelligence chief Musa Kusa that Bout had a "considerable commercial presence in Libya" and aimed to expand his interests there.

In 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported that U.S. government and its contractors paid Bout-controlled firms roughly $60 million to fly supplies into Iraq in support of American forces, describing Bout as a "linchpin" for American supply lines in Iraq.

Investigation

Bout's strategy of constantly moving locations, owning numerous companies, and frequently re-registering aircraft made it hard for authorities to make a case against him. He has never been charged for the alleged African arms deals to which he owes his notoriety. During Bout's reported operations, he is believed to have lived in various countries, including Belgium, Lebanon, Rwanda, Russia, South Africa, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates.[26][40][58][64][65] In 2000, Bout was charged in the Central African Republic with forging documents and was convicted in absentia, but the charges were later dropped.

Belgian authorities requested that Interpol issue a notice for Bout on charges of money laundering. In 2002 an Interpol red notice on Bout was issued.MBout's website states that because he failed to appear in court a Belgian warrant (not the Interpol notice) for his arrest was issued but later cancelled. The site has a document in Dutch to support the claim that the Belgian case against him was dismissed due to his lack of a fixed residence, and because the case could not be prosecuted in a timely fashion.

Bout's U.S. assets were among those frozen in July 2004 under Executive Order 13348, which describes him as a "businessman, dealer and transporter of weapons and minerals" and cites his close association with Charles Taylor.

US sting operation, arrest, and extradition

At the beginning of 2008, a US Drug Enforcement Administration paid informer, claiming to represent the Colombian rebel group FARC, supposedly independently of the CIA, negotiated with Bout for the supply of 100 9K38 Igla surface-to-air missiles and armour-piercing rocket launchers to be parachuted in by Bout to agreed landing spots in Colombia. The imposters invited Bout to Thailand to meet their leader. He was charged with terrorism offences that included conspiracy to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile, conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organisation, conspiracy to kill US nationals, and conspiracy to kill United States officers or employees. The US military was attacking the Colombian rebel group as part of Plan Colombia. None of the alleged crimes were committed in the US.

On 6 March 2008, Bout was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand…>>

Hard to catch, harder to kill, he’ll be thriving on his Brittney break for years to come. Do you think she cares? I haven’t a clue.

Something about the Law of Unintended Consequences