Brittney Griner's harassment at Dallas airport detailed in police report, Mercury promise 'adjustments'

More details have emerged on the harassment Brittney Griner faced from a conservative YouTube personality last week, an incident that has led to a promise of "adjustments" from the Phoenix Mercury.

According to a police report obtained by ESPN, the man, who was described by the WNBA as a "provocateur," approached Griner as her team was walking through a concourse at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Saturday morning. The team was traveling to Indiana for a Sunday game after facing the Dallas Wings twice in Griner's home state of Texas.

A Mercury security guard stayed between Griner and the YouTuber, who tried to push his way toward the All-Star while directing a series of offensive statements toward her. Among other things, he asked her if the U.S. made a fair trade exchanging her for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, asked if she had sex with Russian president Vladimir Putin to get out of prison and claimed she hates America.

Griner ignored him throughout the diatribe, while the security guard reportedly pushed him against a wall in the concourse. Griner reportedly waited behind a gate area until officers arrived, at which point they were unable to find the man.

Griner's Mercury teammate Brianna Turner described a similar scene that morning, calling it "excessive harassment."

The security guard reportedly declined to press charges against the man.

The incident reportedly occurred in DFW's Terminal A, which is the exclusive terminal of American Airlines. The man, who apparently did not have an American Airlines ticket, reportedly left via the Skylink Train toward Terminals B and D.

How was Griner so open to this kind of harassment?

Griner's return from her 10-month incarceration in Russian prison and her decision to continue playing basketball complicated an already tricky situation for the WNBA.

Players have requested for years that the league allow them to travel via charter flights, an idea the league has consistently rejected and forbidden because it would be too expensive. Some teams have signaled a willingness to pay for them and incurred punishments for actually doing so, but the league has deemed it an unfair advantage. The politicization of Griner's situation, however, created an obvious security risk in traveling via public airport terminals.

Last weekend's incident saw that risk become real, leading to something of a blame game breaking out between the Mercury and the WNBA.

The WNBA said in a statement Saturday that it worked with the Mercury "and BG’s team to ensure her safety during her travel, which included charter flights for WNBA games and assigned security personnel with her at all times.” It also issued a statement to the Wall Street Journal, saying, "We informed the Phoenix Mercury earlier this year to move ahead with any arrangements they felt were appropriate and needed, including charter flights."

Mercury head coach Vanessa Nygaard, however, said Sunday that they were given guidelines on travel from the WNBA and followed them, while Griner's agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, told the WSJ that the league didn't approve charter flights for the entire 2023 season.

The WNBA followed up Sunday by telling ESPN that there "may have been uncertainty" about whether the Mercury were allowed to pay for all the charters, then added that they were allowed to do so:

Whatever the Mercury were and were not allowed to do, the end result was one of the most recognizable and discussed athletes in the country walking through an extremely busy airport terminal with little enough security that an obvious troll was able to get within a few feet of her. Nygaard said Sunday that the organization "will be making adjustments that maybe should have happened before," per ESPN, but it's a wonder how the baseline is this low.