Ineptitude Cost Brittney Griner her Phone Call

I, like most on here I’m sure, don’t care much about the Brittney Griner situation. But I thought this was indicative of the state of things (and fit better on here than the MSB)

Trigger warning: ESPN

For all the posturing that the government, WNBA, and NBA have done about “trying to get her home,” they couldn’t even manage to facilitate a phone call

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WNBA star Brittney Griner tried to call her wife nearly a dozen times through the U.S. Embassy in Russia on the couple's fourth anniversary Saturday, but they never connected since the phone line at the embassy was not staffed, Cherelle Griner said Monday.

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The State Department said Monday that "we deeply regret that Brittney Griner was unable to speak with her wife because of a logistical error.''

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She added: "I find it unacceptable and I have zero trust in our government right now. If I can't trust you to catch a Saturday call outside of business hours, how can I trust you to actually be negotiating on my wife's behalf to come home? Because that's a much bigger ask than to catch a Saturday call.''

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Cherelle Griner said a contact in the U.S. government had apologized to her for the error. She said she has since learned that the one number Brittney Griner had been told to dial typically processes calls from prisoners on Mondays through Fridays but not weekends. "But mind you," Cherelle Griner said in the interview, "this phone call had been scheduled for almost two weeks -- with a weekend date."

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