Brittney Griner was the first openly gay, active athlete to be endorsed by Nike which signed her to a $1 million contract. Griner at the time said that she believes this could open up a lot of doors for the gay community in sports. However, her path to the NBA was not an easy one. She had to go through a fair bit of bullying during her school days. And then a lot of online negativity after becoming a celebrity. She once opened up about the hate comments she would receive on social media.

Also, it was tough when she first came out to her parents. While her mother accepted her daughter for who she is, her father could not. Talking about it, she said that her father declared that he wasn’t “raising any lesbian.”?

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Because of the issues in her home, Griner moved out during her senior year. She lived with an assistant coach from her high school team. Griner said that her father was the one who always told her to be just who she is.

Brittney Griner and her father

However, her father came around and was in regular contact with his daughter. “He finally got on board that either you accept your daughter and take her for what she is and you unconditionally love her, or you’re not going to have her,” says Griner’s best friend from high school, Janell Roy. “I don’t think Ray could live with himself if he lost his daughter.”

The Phoenix Mercury selected her as the #1 pick in the 2013 WNBA draft. And Brittney Griner publicly came out in the same year. Although everyone close to the towering center already knew about it. But she did not know about her college’s official stance on homosexual relationships. Griner only found out that the University had banned homosexual behavior in her sophomore year.

She revealed that she received a call from an assistant coach who asked her to delete a tweet she had sent out to her then-girlfriend. Griner talked about the “double standards” she had to endure during her college career. However, she admitted that everyone on her team and her coaches knew about her. And she did not feel rejected by any of them.

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She helped the Baylor Bears women?s basketball team win the NCAA championship in 2012.