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The couple welcomed a baby boy earlier this month.
Brittney Griner, the gold medal-winning Phoenix Mercury center, and her wife, Cherelle, welcomed a son in early July.
The basketball star — who is heading to the 2024 Paris Olympics this month — told CBS Sports that the couple were celebrating everything that's happened this year.
"It kind of sucks because I have to leave, but at the same time, he will understand," Griner told the outlet.
She said that she's been taking pictures nonstop of her new son.
"My whole phone has turned into him now," she said.
Griner and her wife married in 2019. Their son was born July 8, weighing 7 pounds and 8 ounces. Griner said she'll be known as "Pops" to her little one.
"That's my man. He is amazing," Griner said. "They said as soon as you see them, everything that you thought mattered just goes out the window. That's literally what happened."
The upcoming Olympic games will be the first time Griner has played overseas since she spent almost a year detained in Russia. Russian authorities arrested her for having a trace amount of cannabis oil on her when she traveled to Moscow to play with a local team during the WNBA's off-season.
Griner was tried on drug charges, convicted, and sentenced to nine years in prison. She was freed from a labor camp on December 8, 2022, after intense negotiations by the Biden administration.
Griner released a memoir about her life and detention, Coming Home, on May 7. She has since said she won’t play overseas again unless it’s in the Olympics.
Griner was honored by her alma mater, Baylor University, this year; it retired her NCAA jersey number, 42, in February. Though the Baptist university didn't always support her — in her 2014 book, In My Skin, Griner criticized the school’s willingness to “benefit from the success of their gay athletes. That is, as long as those gay athletes don’t talk about being gay.” She would not come out publicly until after leaving the school.
Griner met Cherelle at Baylor "in the sub area" of a school cafeteria. Griner shared the story in one Instagram post where she said that Cherelle "tapped me on my shoulder and told me I took [her] milkshake (still up for debate lol) and I was immediately blown away at [her] beauty!"
"You had no idea but I knew you were the one for me baby," Griner wrote. "You stuck by my side at the lowest and at the highest!"
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