In eighth grade, Brittney Griner was just another tall girl. Though she was nearly six feet -- almost as tall as her dad and two inches taller than her mother -- most girls have pretty much topped out at that age. They might add a half-inch or so, but unlike boys, the growth spurts come early.
But Brittney Griner, as in many other ways, is an exception. She continued to grow and added more than a half-inch -- much more, in fact -- and now towers over her parents. Two years later, Griner is 6-foot-8.
"It was a pretty good jump," she says, looking down on a world that will get even further away. "I still have some growing to do," she says. After she underwent an MRI, her doctor told her that her growth plates are still open.
Griner's future is wide-open as well. Heading into her senior season in high school, she is widely acclaimed as the next great player in women's basketball -- the next Lisa Leslie, the next Candace Parker. Except for one thing: She's going to be better than either of them.
She can dunk with ease. One hand, two hands, running start, no steps … It's not an effort for her, but she's not the kind of person to showboat or pop her jersey. On the court, her expression doesn't change much, but in conversation, she is more animated than most teenage girls would be talking to a stranger.
Then again, she became famous early on, thanks to a YouTube video of her dunking during a game. "Everybody in school saw it," she says, "but I didn't really grasp that so many other people saw it. They were all over America, even people in other countries."
Griner was, in a YouTube way, famous. She was known as the girl from Houston who could dunk, and since the number of females who have dunked in games can be counted on one hand, it made her special, a prodigy, a phenomenon.
But Griner-mania has only just begun, because she's not just some freaky tall girl who can get over the rim. Barring injury, Griner is going to be the new face of the sport, without question. Ask college coaches if they've ever seen anything like her, and even the usually talkative recruiting machines have to pause. Often, they just shake their heads and say, "No." Sometimes, they'll expand a bit: "She's the best I've ever seen." And then they stop -- those who've seen her know what they've witnessed. They don't need to say any more.
But for most of the basketball world, Griner remains just a rumor, if only because she didn't start playing until she was in ninth grade. In junior high, she played volleyball and soccer, and when she got to Nimitz High School, she was on the volleyball varsity as a freshman. Basketball coach Debbie Jackson couldn't help but notice the tall girl and asked her to try out for the basketball team.
"I'm skinny now," says Griner, "but I was super skinny back then. When I first got there, the older girls sort of tested me."
But Griner quickly discovered that she liked contact, liked the physical aspect of the game. And volleyball was quickly left behind.
Still, Griner knew almost nothing about the game.
"I paid close attention," she says. "Everybody understood all the terms. I knew what the 'paint' was, but the offense and traps were hard."
One thing wasn't hard: blocking shots. "Blocking shots came to me first," she says, "though they came with some fouls, too. I had to learn what I could and couldn't do."
Now, those blocks are her calling cards. She can control a game without scoring because she's not just 6-8; she's a long 6-8. She is also a fine athlete and would undoubtedly be a pretty good player even if she were 5-foot-7. As with her length, athleticism and timing, she is the best shot-blocker the women's game has ever seen. In a recent spring tournament, she would lay in wait in the lane as a 3-point shooter wound up on the perimeter. As the ball was released, she would leap out and intersect the shot long after it had left the shooter's hand.
"I like to play defense," says Griner, but she also has a picture-perfect shot with plenty of rotation. Her fadeaway is literally unstoppable, but she also knows how to score through contact. In short, she is the perfect post player: She has big hands and is tall, long, physical and athletic.
But not many have seen her play because, unlike so many of her peers, she didn't get out on the circuit when she was 11 years old. In fact, before Marques Jackson brought to the DFW Elite, one of the top summer programs in the country, Griner had only played for her relatively unknown high school team and a lower-level club team.
Now, however, she's become a sensation. "The hardest thing is doing what everybody expects me to do," she says. "I try to block it out, but you can't."
When she plays, the stands are crowded with fans and college coaches. When she blocks a shot, the crowd reaction is always audible. When she swoops from out of nowhere to reject a shot that looked to be free and clear, the volume grows higher. And when she blocks two or three shots on the same possession, the crowd explodes.
And of course, should it even appear that she has a chance to dunk, the hum of the fans is audible long before she touches the ball.
"People think it's cool being famous," says Griner. "Everybody knows you, and they think it's glamorous."
But even at 17, Griner can't be anonymous. Her height alone guarantees airport conversations, and coupled with her imminent fame, she will always be the focus of attention.
Of course, a lot of that attention comes from college coaches, but Griner took the air out of that balloon by committing to Baylor before her junior year. "Before basketball, I didn't really think about college," she says. "Then I started thinking about schools -- Baylor, Tennessee and some others."
She settled on Baylor, a Baptist school about three hours from Houston. She didn't want to leave Texas, and despite the risks of committing too early (her DFW teammate Odyssey Sims recently backed out of a verbal commitment), she's confident in her choice. "I'm not going to change my mind," she says. "Besides, if the other schools still want you, they'll let you know."
But those who have seen her play feel college will not be much of a challenge for long. Although she might have trouble dealing with the strength and experience of WNBA posts, Griner would make every roster in the league this summer -- and it's possible, if not likely, that she could help the U.S. Olympic team this summer in Beijing.
Yes, she's that good, even though she didn't follow the usual track of playing hundreds and hundreds of games before she was 14. "If I had to do it over again, I'd do it the same way," she says. She's still excited about the games and excited about the travel. "I get a big kick out of it," she says. "We were in a tunnel underwater in Virginia, and I got a big kick out of that."
She was also excited to get her first USA Basketball invitation (to the Under-18 tryouts). "It brightened my day," she says, but as it turned it, the dates conflicted with her mom's surgery and she couldn't attend. Nonetheless, there's no doubt she's going to do a lot more traveling with the various national teams.
Still, Griner has her senior year of high school to go -- and she wants to make the best of it. "We lost in the second round [of the playoffs]," she says, "and the girls want to go further this time."
They most likely will, but it's safe to say that none of them will go further than Griner -- who sooner rather than later will become the most-recognized female basketball player on the planet.
And don't forget: She's still growing.
