LAS VEGAS — Brittney Griner made an emphatic, emotional and highly effective return to the WNBA All-Star Game.
The Phoenix Mercury veteran scored her team’s first six points, put down two dunks and finished with 18 points in the league’s midseason showcase Saturday night.
The sellout crowd roared when Griner was introduced; clearly moved by the ovation, the nine-time All-Star tapped her heart with her right hand. There was no doubt, a year after forcefully being absent from this event, that Griner was the star of the show.
“To have that ovation and all those little memories that I can cherish now, it means the world,” Griner said. “So it was no question I was going to come and play. They have never wavered in their support.”
Oh, and she helped Team Stewart, captained by the New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart, win 143-127 over Team Wilson, led by the Las Vegas Aces’ A’ja Wilson. The 143 points and 270 combined points are WNBA All-Star Game records.
Team Stewart’s Jewell Loyd of the Seattle Storm broke the single-game individual scoring record with 31 points, setting the mark on a pass from Griner, and was named MVP of the game.
“I played hard because of my parents, I didn’t get them a gift for their anniversary,” Loyd said. “So I think this was acceptable. I hope it is.”
Maya Moore and Kelsey Plum had shared the record at 30 points. Plum tied her own record with 30 points Saturday, when she was one of four Aces competing for Team Wilson; the quartet received loud ovations from the home crowd in pregame introductions.
Plum, who also had five assists, said sponsors pledged that for each basket and assist, $1,000 would be donated to a Las Vegas charity.
“So I was gunning,” Plum said. “I mean 17 shots in 21 minutes is wild.”
She raised $16,000.
The Atlanta Dream’s Rhyne Howard, a former Bradley Central High School standout from Cleveland, Tennessee, scored 16 points, including four 3-pointers, and also had three rebounds and three assists in 15 minutes as a reserve player for Team Wilson. Howard, the league’s No. 1 overall draft pick and rookie of the year in 2022, was an All-Star for the second straight year, this time as a late addition and injury replacement for the Washington Mystics’ Elena Delle Donne.
Griner at this time last year was being held in Russia on drug charges, sparking international outrage that she was being wrongfully detained. The WNBA named her an honorary starter, with every player wearing her No. 42 jersey in the second half of last year’s game.
This time Griner was actually in the starting lineup — the only one with that jersey number — overshadowing almost everything that happened on the court.
Team Stewart made Griner the focal point from the beginning. She delivered a dunk with 3:50 remaining in the first quarter off an outlet pass from Stewart. Griner also had a dunk just 25 seconds into the second half.
“I called my knees and talked to them and gave them a little pep talk,” the 32-year-old Griner said of her dunks.
She showed that same jumping ability when she leapt onto the riser for the postgame news conference.
At one point in the first quarter, Griner challenged Team Wilson point guard Chelsea Gray of the Aces, but Gray drove past and dropped in a reverse layup from high off the glass. It was one of the few plays that didn’t work out for Griner.
At the first media timeout, Griner was shown on the video board as she sat on the bench with the words, “WELCOME BACK BRITTNEY GRINER” on the screen below her face.
Griner was among the players who wore microphones during the game, joking after missing a 3-pointer: “Got something in my eye.”
The game was played with a 20-second shot clock rather than the usual 24, two four-point spots on each side of the court were added and there were no free throws. The teams combined to hit 12 four-point shots.
New York’s Sabrina Ionescu, representing Team Stewart, made all three of her attempts from four-point range in the first half, carrying over her extraordinary shooting from the previous day. Ionescu set a WNBA and NBA record with 37 of a possible 40 points in the 3-point contest. She finished with 18 points.