Britney Griner mental health break: Three basketball players who have spoken out about mental health issues

Griner played in 20 of Phoenix’s 23 games in her first season since her detention in Russia last year, which lasted nearly 10 months.

“The Mercury fully supports Brittney and we will continue to work together on a timeline for her return,” a team statement said.
Griner has been a bright spot for an otherwise struggling Mercury team that currently sits 10th in the WNBA standings with a 6-17 mark. The 6-foot-10 forward is averaging 18.2 points, 6.7 rebounds and 1.7 blocks per game, leading Phoenix in each of those categories, and earned her ninth All-Star selection last month.

In addition to Britney, mental-health-conscious Kevin Love, the 33-year-old has turned to coping mechanisms such as therapy, journaling and a daily check-in to help “protect his energy.” The strategies are not necessarily groundbreaking. The strategies aren’t necessarily groundbreaking – but Love’s recent openness about them has been.

In 2018, Love wrote about her decades-long struggle with depression and anxiety in a Player’s Tribune essay titled “Everyone is going through something.” The essay launched a movement among high-profile athletes to destigmatize mental illness. Since then, he says, more people approach him about mental health than basketball.

“If I didn’t have the tools or hadn’t worked with a therapist for the last four years, I don’t know if I would have been able to deal with people sharing their stories,” Love told CNBC Make It. Love calls his struggles “a gift and a curse.” As early as high school, he says, he used periods of depression as fuel to win basketball games. His entire identity came to revolve around his performance on the court. And that only led him to darker places.

“You can’t fulfill yourself outside of depression,” Love says. “You can’t fulfill yourself without that high level of anxiety.”

Today, Love says he’s on a mission to help support others struggling with mental illness – primarily through the Kevin Love Fund, a charity that provides education, research and grants geared toward mental health.

Lastly, in 2018, DeMar DeRozan played for the Toronto Raptors and had one of the best seasons of his career. The star revealed his battle with depression in an interview with the Toronto Star.

“No matter how indestructible we look, we’re all human at the end of the day,” DeRozan said in his interview.
That interview helped other NBA players dealing with the same issue. Many were afraid to discuss these issues, but DeRozan’s interview gave them courage.