The National Anthem & Sports

Disclaimer: I wrote this article over the span of five days. I wrote and rewrote multiple sections of it. The article is not cohesive, nor is it particularly well written but what it is is a good recap of the anthem situation with the Dallas Mavericks and a good indicator of my thoughts on the matter. I have written better pieces and will write far superior pieces in the future but frankly, I am tired of staring at this in my drafts folder and need to move on to different articles. 

. . . 

Monday night, the 8th of February 2020, the NBA game between the Dallas Mavericks and Minnesota Timberwolves had an unconventional beginning. There were about two extra minutes of silence before the game that any person who has attended an American sports event would find odd. The game began without the singing/playing of the national anthem. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, decided his team no longer needed to play the over 200-year-old song before home games. The game proceeded as normal. The Mavs won by a relatively close score of 127-122, led by big nights from their two stars Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingas. 

The only thing anyone could talk about after the game was the stopping of the national anthem. It’s a little odd that this happened now though, as the Mavs had not played the National anthem before any of their home games dating back to the pre-season. That’s not the point though. What is, is that the sports world finally took notice, so this is when we will talk about it. This is when the think-pieces will go up. I am here to hop on that bandwagon. Though hopefully, I can provide some sort of unique insight. Also, it’s late at night and I have been sitting on this article for three days now as I try to process how to write this and where to go with it. Is this a particularly well written second paragraph and segway into my thoughts? No. Is this my blog/page to do with as I please? Yes. Does that mean from time to time there will be a word vomit of an article as I try to flush the stale creative juices to get new ones to flood my brain? Also yes. 

“The Star-Spangled Banner” is a tune that everyone who has watched or played sports is intimately familiar with. I have had to hear it before every basketball game I played from the age of 11 through 18. Every athletic event I attended, every professional game I watched on TV, all had this little two-minute ditty playing beforehand. This song is a point of pride for some, and an indicator of the past, of the foundation of injustice this country is built on for others. (Yes, this article is about to get a bit political, so buckle the fuck up.) 

This situation caught a bit of attention and the NBA’s League Office felt obliged to finally say something about it, stating that all teams would continue to play the national anthem prior to all games. So where does that leave Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks? As of Wednesday, the Cuban stated that the Mavs would resume playing the national anthem before games. So what was the reason they stopped playing it in the first place if they were just going to resume playing it so swiftly? Cuban interviewed with the always amazing Rachel Nichols and in it, he stated, "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.” 

I love that the Mavs and Mark Cuban specifically, are listening to the wants and needs of their community in Dallas. The Mavs are an organization first and it would be easy for the business side of things to take precedent, but they seem to be a team that cares. According to Cuban in that same interview though, there was never any real decision about the long-term options as far as the national anthem being played goes. They decided to stop playing it, then just as easily agreed to begin playing the anthem again. 

The Mavericks did something a lot of people will probably be overly upset about, all to just flip it at the first sign of resistance and that is the part I don’t understand. I have never had a problem with the national anthem personally, but I understand why certain marginalized groups might feel that it doesn’t have the same meaning for them as it does for others. The Mavs had the chance to make a real statement and push for something here that always felt a little strange to me in the first place, but instead, they just abandoned the idea at the first spot of trouble. 

The reason the anthem has always felt weird to me is the frequency at which it is played. Play the anthem for big playoff games and always at international events, but why does the anthem need to be played or sung before every single sporting event from middle school through the professional leagues. The answer, “We have always done it and should always do it,” is a bad answer and unacceptable in this situation. The anthem should be a thing that we bust out for the special occasions to make us all feel a little more united for the big games, but instead, it serves as, at best a bit of an annoyance, or at worst a symbol of nationalism that can be mildly dangerous should current trends from our past presidential administration continue. 

Political matters like this are as sensitive as they have ever been in this country, and it can create a sense of outrage over small changes to the status quo, from both sides of the aisle. The national anthem not being played before games should be a small issue that teams can decide on for themselves. Personally, I would stop playing it, if for no other reason than having heard it over one thousand times in my life and it usually feels like a waste of two minutes of my life every time I have heard it. There are groups of people, mostly those of African and Latin lineage, that have a very different perspective of America, and because of that have a very different view of what the anthem means. “The old ways” are much scarier and more dangerous for those people than for anyone else and cannot be just brushed over as sensitivity or whatever other stupid words people may use to describe them. Overlooking any entire people's opinion because it flies in the face of tradition is lame and a sign of being stuck in a time that we don’t live in anymore. Frankly, that time sucked by all accounts. At least it did for those people who had too much melatonin in their skin. 

I don’t think that the anthem should be banned or changed or anything like that. I do think that the anthem being played should be up to the discretion of individual teams. Some would play it, some wouldn’t. That should be okay. It won’t be obvious, because a middle ground is completely unacceptable in this country and everyone hates compromise, but I don't. I like to live in a fantasy land where people just leave each other alone and don’t get pissy over the tiniest things. This is not the last time we will hear about this issue. Where it goes from here though, is a completely separate topic. Hopefully, it doesn’t create another huge divide in the sports world, though at this point that feels a little unavoidable.