Bullying News 2013: WNBA Basketball Star Brittney Griner Opens Up About Being Bullied, Says 'I Was Humiliated'

Article Corrected/Updated - 4:56 p.m. ET **

Brittney Griner wasn't always a 6'8" WNBA star, like most kids, she, too, was the subject of bullying during her childhood. 

The Phoenix Mercury player says that her peers often made fun of her due to her appearance and that she didn't feel socially accepted growing up in Houston, Texas. In fact, the 22-year-old athlete tells the newspaper that there were classmates who refused to believe she was female and taunted her.

Griner told the LA Times that at one point she felt "humiliated" after being the target of bullying and that her "whole school was laughing" at her after a boy stopped her in the school hallway and called her "a dude."

"I just stood there and took it," Griner recalled. "I was humiliated. The whole school was laughing at me."

She says that she was an easy target because "I was always taller, my feet were always bigger and my voice was deeper," said Griner, who publicly came out as lesbian in April.

Even after becoming a standout star for her athleticism at Baylor University, Griner still faced bullies when she won the ESPY Award for Best College Athlete Award in mid-July. During the awards ceremony, online bullies slammed the star, writing malicious Twitter messages that Griner should win for Best Male Athlete instead, reports Us Weekly.

Back in 2012, bullies also questioned her decision to not compete in the Olympic games, suggesting that maybe Griner wouldn't have passed the gender tests. 

"I wanted to stay in school," she said of her choice to not compete in London. "My mom, she's sick. I just wanted to see her. It was just stupid. People are always going to come up with dumb stuff and rumors that they don't actually know the truth to."

However, now the Baylor graduate says she's learned to deal with bullies by ignoring them.

"When I was younger, it really bothered me to the point where I was like 'I don't even want to be alive; why am I getting treated like that?" she told the LA Times. "But as I got older, I started caring less."

**The article previoiusly mistakenly stated that Brittney Griner was a transgender player.