Tony Gutierrez / Associated Press
The Dallas Mavericks will not play the national anthem before home games at the American Airlines Center this season.
They haven’t done that in any of the 13 pre-season and regular season home games so far, and Mavericks governor Mark Cuban confirmed for Tim Cato from The Athletic on Monday that they won’t play the song going forward, even with the fans coming back to the arena.
Monday’s home game against the Minnesota Timberwolves was Dallas’ first this season with few fans in attendance.
An NBA spokesman said that “in the unique circumstances of this season, teams are allowed to conduct their operations before the game as they wish”.
Former San Francisco 49ers defender Colin Kaepernick was the first athlete to generate several headlines while kneeling during the national anthem as a way to protest police brutality and racial injustice, but the practice has spread to athletes in other sports .
Many NBA players did this when the 2019-20 campaign was restarted at the Walt Disney World Resort bubble, including the Mavericks.
Cato noted that the NBA rulebook requires players to stand up during the anthem, although this has not been applied in recent seasons, as more athletes have started to do so as a way of supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
Tim MacMahon ESPN noted in July that Cuban expressed support for Mavericks players kneeling during the anthem and even entered into a Twitter exchange with Senator Ted Cruz on the matter.
“The National Anthem Police in this country is out of control,” tweeted Cuban. “If you want to complain, complain to your boss and ask him why he doesn’t play the National Anthem every day before you start work.”
Before 1918, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was not played regularly before sporting events in the United States, according to CNN Calum Trenaman. The ritual began to increase in popularity during the First World War and – after music became the country’s official national anthem in 1931 – it became more regular during World War II, for Timein Olivia B. Waxman. In 1945, NFL commissioner Elmer Layden instructed all teams to play the anthem before the games, making it the first league to do so.
For now, Mavericks will give up tradition.