The Dallas Mavericks have the country’s attention.
The team had not played the United States’ national anthem during a regular season game during the 2020-21 NBA season that began in late December. No one seemed to notice until Monday night, however, when fans were allowed in AmericanAirlines Center for the first time this year.
Now, the NBA has made a policy requiring teams to play “The Star-Spangled Banner” before games.
Cuban joined Rachel Nichols on Wednesday’s edition of “The Jump” on ESPN to clear up some of the “misinformation” circulating about the Mavericks’ decision to forgo playing the anthem.
“We’re always talking to our community. That’s something (Mavericks CEO Cynthia Marshall) stands for and is very insistent upon and has become a core part of who we are at the Dallas Mavericks,” Cuban said. “And in listening to the community, there were quite a few people who voiced their concerns, really their fears that the national anthem did not fully represent them, that their voices were not being heard. So we’ve had a lot of conversations about whether or not we should play the anthem. And so during the first preseason game, we decided to not play it and just see what the response was, knowing that we were going to have ongoing conversations about it.
“We didn’t make any decision to never play the national anthem then — that wasn’t the case at all. We didn’t cancel the national anthem. We still had our flag flying proud up on the wall at the American Airlines Center and everybody had the opportunity to address it and pray to it or salute to it or whatever their feelings are.”
So here’s the big question: Did the Mavericks plan to forgo the anthem all season?
“The bottom line is we had always discussed the fact that we probably would end up playing it at some point, probably when fans came back,” Cuban said. “But there was never any final decision … that we would not play the anthem.”
But make no mistake. Cuban and the Mavs never made a concrete decision about whether or not to play the anthem this season.
“As I mentioned earlier, we never decided that we weren’t going to play the anthem when we had fans in,” Cuban noted. “You know, we had some fans in last game, but they were all healthcare workers and people we were honoring. They weren’t ticket holders or season-ticket holders at all. So, we didn’t know that it would be brought to a head at this point. But it was an ongoing discussion in terms of when we would have our paid fans or season-ticket holders back in the arena (and) that we would address it then.”
Consider it addressed. (We’re sure this issue is far from over, though.)
