Mark Cuban, the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, has
been experimenting with not playing the national anthem before the team's
basketball games. Mark Cuban said that some fans were fearful of the national
anthem, and that some felt their voices were being silenced. Fearing a backlash
from some of its fans, the NBA quickly announced the national anthem would be played
at games by all teams.
Despite that edict, the Dallas Mavericks have stopped
playing the national anthem before home games and have no plans to start
up again, team owner Mark Cuban confirmed to media outlets on Tuesday.
The Athletic first reported that the Mavericks had not played
the anthem at any of the team’s 13 games at the American Airlines Center in
Dallas. ESPN added that Cuban directed the team to end the practice after a
discussion with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, although he did not announce the
decision publicly until Tuesday’s reports.
“It was my
decision, and I made it in November,” Cuban said in a brief statement to The
New York Times.
Cuban addressed
critics of his stance, namely Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), saying on Twitter: “The
National Anthem Police in this country are out of control. If you want to
complain, complain to your boss and ask why they don’t play the National Anthem
every day before you start work.”
Predictably, Cuban’s decision about the national anthem was met by scorn by some of our country’s conservatives, but his actions are very much in character. He has repeatedly clashed with league official, and has been fined often. His ownership of the Mavericks is completely fitting, since he is very much a maverick himself – which is why he got to be a billionaire to begin with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban
As long as I can remember, the national anthem has been played
at sporting events, but that was not always the case.
The first documented time that
we know the song was played at a sporting event is in 1862 in Brooklyn. But the
thing is, you had to hire a band. That was expensive, so it was only for
special occasions - opening day, holidays - up until the time of World
War II, where sound systems come in, so they could play a recording. And thus,
they started to play it before every game.
In the 1950s, the Baltimore Orioles, of all teams, decided that
playing "The Banner" before every game cheapened its impact. The general
manager at the time decided that he was going to only play it during
special occasions.
The Chicago Cubs owner felt
the same way. And he did not play "The Banner" before every game
until the '60s, during the Vietnam War. And even in the 1960s, the Chicago
White Sox experimented with substituting "God Bless America."
Then 1968 happened, and things got crazy.
On January 23, the USS Pueblo was seized by authorities in
North Korea.
The Vietcong launched the Tet offensive on January 31.
Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4.
Bobby Kennedy was assassinated on June 6.
The 1968
Democratic National Convention was held August 26–29 at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, United States. On
August 28, 1968, around 10,000 protesters gathered in Grant Park for the
demonstration, intending to march to the International Amphitheatre where the
convention was being held. At approximately 3:30 p.m., a young man lowered
the American flag that was at the park. The police broke through the crowd
and began beating the young man, while the crowd pelted the police with food,
rocks, and chunks of concrete. The chants of some of the protesters
shifted from, "Hell no, we won't go!" to, "Pigs are whores".
At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City in October, in the medal award ceremony for the men's 200 meter race, black American athletes Tommie Smith (gold) and John Carlos (bronze) took a stand for civil rights by raising their black-gloved fists and wearing black socks in lieu of shoes. The Australian Peter Norman, who had run second, wore an American "human rights" badge as support to them on the podium. In response, the IOC banned Smith and Carlos from the Olympic Games for life, and Norman's omission from Australia's Olympic team in 1972 was allegedly as punishment.
At the World Series in October, Jose Feliciano performed the
national anthem on his guitar, and played it in a very non-traditional way.
Fans were outraged, and his career suffered for a period of time, but
eventually recovered.
https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2019/04/12/jose-feliciano-susan-tigers-world-series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQkY2UFBUb4
In 1990, Roseanne Barr sang the national anthem in San Diego,
and did such a poor job that she was booed by the fans, and (briefly) retired
from the entertainment business.
During the 2015 NFL season, Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco Giants started kneeling during the national anthem in order to protest police violence and racism. Since becoming a free agent at the end of the season, he has been shunned by other teams – but he made a difference. Although he enraged Donald Trump, the league eventually came to the conclusion that he was right, and recently committed $250 million over the next decade to combat racism.
Francis Scott Key (August 1, 1779 – January 11, 1843) was an American lawyer, author, and amateur poet from Frederick, Maryland, who is best known for writing the lyrics for the American national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner".
Key observed the British bombardment
of Fort McHenry in 1814 during the War of 1812.
He was inspired upon seeing the American flag still flying over the fort at
dawn and wrote the poem "Defence of Fort M'Henry"; it was published
within a week with the suggested tune of the popular song "To Anacreon in Heaven". The song with
Key's lyrics became known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" and slowly
gained in popularity as an unofficial anthem, finally achieving official status
more than a century later under President Herbert Hoover as
the national anthem.
Key was a lawyer in Maryland and
Washington D.C. for four decades and worked on important cases, including
the Burr conspiracy trial, and he argued
numerous times before the Supreme Court. He was nominated for District
Attorney for the District of Columbia by President Andrew Jackson, where he served
from 1833 to 1841. Key was a devout Episcopalian.
Key owned slaves from 1800, during
which time abolitionists ridiculed his words, claiming that America
was more like the "Land of the Free and Home of the Oppressed". As
District Attorney, he suppressed abolitionists and did not support an immediate
end to slavery. He was also a leader of the American Colonization Society which
sent freed slaves to Africa. He freed some of his slaves in the 1830s,
paying one ex-slave as his farm foreman. He publicly criticized slavery and
gave free legal representation to some slaves seeking freedom, but he also represented
owners of runaway slaves.
It’s not the end of the world if the
Dallas Mavericks don’t play the national anthem at their games, since the song
will be played virtually every where else at public events – and EVERYBODY
loved Lady Gaga at Joe Biden’s inauguration.
WATCH: Lady Gaga sings ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at Biden
inauguration | PBS NewsHour
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