Mercury’s Brittney Griner ‘nowhere near retiring’ after season-ending playoff loss at Lynx

Diana Taurasi has yet to confirm the end of her 20-year career with the Phoenix Mercury.

As for her longest-tenured teammate and 11-year veteran Brittney Griner, she’s staying in the WNBA for years to come.

After Phoenix was eliminated in Game 2 of the playoffs’ first round at Minnesota on Wednesday, Griner scoffed at a question to vehemently deny retirement is in her thoughts.

Online cowards: Take your Brittney Griner hate and crawl back under your rock

“As far as me and my playing, I’m nowhere near retiring, so let’s not even start that talk or try to get that going out there. Like what? No,” Griner said at the postgame media session. “Y’all are gonna see me again, so yeah, I will let y’all know when we can start talking about me and retiring. It ain’t soon, so just know that.”

Mercury’s starting point guard Natasha Cloud (16 points, game-high 10 assists in the loss) laughed and adlibbed multiple times during Griner’s response, “She’s stuck” and “She’s got a son to provide for.” The latter remark from Cloud referred to Griner’s first child born in July.

Griner, 33, has spent her entire career in Phoenix and is on an expiring one-year deal she re-signed with the team in March. She had a team-high 24 points on a stellar 10-of-15 shooting, added five rebounds, and two blocks as the No. 7 seed Mercury were swept.

Griner’s 2024 season coincidentally began and ended against the No. 2 seed Minnesota Lynx. She was initially sidelined from a toe injury and made her season debut in the Mercury’s 81-80 Commissioner’s Cup home win over Minnesota on June 7. Griner was Phoenix’s second-best scorer (17.8 points per game), leader in rebounds (6.6) and finished fourth in the league for blocks (1.5) through 30 games this year.

Cloud explained how she helped devise Mercury’s two-year rebuild plan after their league-worst 9-31 record in 2023. She left Washington to sign with Phoenix in free agency last offseason wanting to play with the Mercury’s three returning players Griner, Taurasi, and Sophie Cunningham. They added other key veteran players such as Kahleah Copper and starting wing Rebecca Allen in trades with Chicago and Connecticut, respectively, in February.

“When I came into free agency, we really talked about a two-year plan of knowing that we were getting some pieces this year, but this next free agency was going to be a big piece for us,” Cloud said. “We get into the season and we’re like, ‘Oh, we can actually be really good.’ And from there, the ebbs and flows of a new season, I think that people forget we literally took a core of three, and then we added and plugged in a bunch of pieces. A lot of this summer was spent trying to figure it out chemistry-wise, figuring out how we wanted to play: was it fast, was it slow, defensively where were strong at. I’m proud of us.”

Cloud added that despite being swept by Minnesota, “this is the most connected that we’ve been on both ends of the floor” during Games 1 and 2.

The Mercury ended this regular season 19-21, eighth in team offense and ninth in defense. Copper earned AP All-WNBA Second Team honors as the league’s third in scoring (21.1 points), and won a gold medal with Griner and Taurasi on Team USA at this summer’s Paris Olympics.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mercury’s Brittney Griner has no plans to retire from WNBA