On Monday night, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) finally broke its public silence around the imprisonment of one of the league’s biggest stars, Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner, detained in a Russian prison since February 17.

“Obviously,” said ESPN’s Ryan Ruocco, “the number one topic on everybody’s mind when it comes to the WNBA right now is Brittney Griner: how she’s doing, her status.” This wasn’t obvious to me. For weeks, the league had said nothing in public conversation, marketing materials, or commercial broadcasts about Griner’s detention.

For the last month or so, I’ve obsessively followed coverage in the women’s basketball community about Brittney Griner. I have a Google Alert for her name that notifies me multiple times a day. I’ve diligently watched every ESPN2 and ESPNU broadcast of Women’s March Madness. And I covered the NCAA Final Four in Minneapolis with the explicit goal of understanding what people within women’s basketball had to say about Brittney Griner.