The tumultuous relationship between WNBA stars Brittney Griner and Glory Johnson became tabloid fodder ever since the pair became involved. In a revealing interview, Johnson shares her side of the whirlwind romance that went to the pits, all while maintaining she was never a lesbian herself.
Johnson sat down with Cosmopolitan for an interview that will appear in the magazine’s December issue in where explains how Griner swept her off her feet and the pressure she felt in yielding to the advances from the Phoenix Mercury star. Johnson was candid in sharing how her ex aggressively pursued her, but it should be noted that reps for Griner declined comments at the time.
From Cosmopolitan:
Johnson and Griner connected at a basketball camp in Las Vegas in 2013. Johnson noticed that Griner — drafted first overall that year by the Phoenix Mercury — found excuses to hang around her. One night, when a group of friends went to see Cirque du Soleil, Griner made her move, sitting next to Johnson and putting her arm around her.
Ordinarily, Johnson would have brushed off such a move from a woman, she says, but on this night, she went with it. With the buzz from a round of tall cocktails and the acrobats flying in the dark, the evening felt “pretty romantic,” she says. “I wasn’t thinking about her being a female. She was just somebody who was showing me a really, really good time.”
More drinks flowed after the show, and Griner escorted Johnson to her hotel room in the wee hours. In the room, things got interesting. “It was really awkward because what do you do when you’ve never been in this situation with a female before?” Johnson says. Griner, deep-voiced with dreadlocks and size-17 feet to anchor her lofty frame, put Johnson at ease with her swagger. “We finally laid down and were about to go to sleep. Of course, there was a little bit more that happened,” Johnson says. “As I was getting more and more comfortable, more and more was happening.”
The next morning, the women looked at each other and smiled. “It was literally a moment like, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” Johnson says. The two went their separate ways but met up again later after a game in Tulsa. They went home together — then missed a flight with their teams the next morning. Their names were blasted on the airport intercom, and their secret was out. By the summer of 2014, Johnson says, they were a couple.
Some people wanted to define her. “Not a lot of people understand it. They wanted me to be a lesbian who converted from being straight,” she says. “It just doesn’t work for me like that.” She remains straight, she says. She simply fell for an individual. “I’ve had men that needed to step up more as a man than Brittney,” she says. “I was set.”
Read more the rest of the Glory Johnson interview by following this link. Hit the following pages for photos of Johnson taken by Cosmopolitan.
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Photo: Ian Allen/Cosmopolitan
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