Dallas Mavericks end playing nationwide anthem just before dwelling games at the direction of proprietor Mark Cuban

The Dallas Mavericks have stopped playing the national anthem right before dwelling games at the course of owner Mark Cuban, a Mavericks spokeswoman reported.

The anthem has not been played at any of the 13 preseason and common time game titles played so much at American Airways Middle, Mavericks communications manager Renee Felton advised NBC Information on Wednesday.

The Athletic was the first to discover the modify all through Monday’s sport, the initial played with some fans in attendance.

Cuban verified to The Athletic and ESPN that he experienced altered the pregame ritual, but declined to explain even more.

The NBA’s guidelines involve gamers to stand throughout the anthem, NBC Sports noted. Nonetheless, NBA commissioner Adam Silver has not enforced that rule in new several years as players selected to kneel throughout the anthem in protests of law enforcement brutality and social injustice.

“Under the one of a kind situation of this time, groups are permitted to run their pregame operations as they see in shape,” NBA spokesman Tim Frank claimed.

Cuban’s situation on gamers kneeling in the course of the anthem has changed above the decades.

In 2019, when then-President Donald Trump denounced NFL gamers who knelt in the course of the anthem, Cuban reported: “This is The united states, and I am proud of persons who communicate out civilly. Which is who we are as a state,” but “I am going to be standing there with my hand over my coronary heart. I think the gamers will be. I hope them to be.”

In a June interview with ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” he altered his tune.

“If they were having a knee and they were being being respectful, I’d be proud of them,” he stated. “Ideally I might be part of them.”

Cuban even received in a Twitter spat with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about the problem in July.