Before it got to this point, where did people imagine it was going?
Now that it’s at this point, where do people imagine it is going?
The Dallas Mavericks became the first NBA team, and perhaps the first team in all of North American professional sports, to cease playing the national anthem before games this season, according to The Athletic’s Tim Cato. The Mavericks did not comment on the decision but confirmed to Cato that they have not played the national anthem prior to any home games this season. The Mavericks have hosted 12 regular-season games so far this season along with a single preseason game.
According to Cato, there was no internal announcement about the decision. Team employees only found out when they realized it for themselves. The NBA’s other 29 teams have found ways to play the anthem without having a singer in the building, largely by using recordings, but the league itself has permitted the choice not to play it at all. “Under the unique circumstances of this season, teams are permitted to run their pregame operations as they see fit,” a league spokesman told The Athletic.
League rules state that players must stand for the national anthem, but those rules have not been strictly enforced in recent years. Players on every team in the Orlando bubble knelt for the anthem when the season resumed last summer. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban supported the decision, and the league as a whole used the Disney bubble to promote the social justice messaging such protests inspired.
I guess everyone knows that Mark Cuban is not America, nor is he Cuban – he is a Russian Jew.
What we have, right now, is the left standing up and claiming to represent America. “Our values,” they say. “It’s who we are.” They stand in front of a flag of the country. Kamala, who is an Indian anchor baby raised in Canada, is a practicing Hindu.
But at the same time as these people are claiming to be the real America – to have replaced us and then become us, right before our very eyes, they are also distancing themselves from America in every way imaginable.
Their soldiers are burning the same flag they stand in front of.
This is vile, it is dehumanizing, and we are not even allowed to disagree with it.