Yesterday, Mark Cuban confirmed that his team had stopped playing the national anthem before games.

Cuban said he made the decision not to play the national anthem after consulting with N B A commissioner Adam Silver.

But now, today, MBA chief communications officer Mike Bass issued this statement saying Quote With NBA teams now in the process of welcoming fans back to their arenas, all teams will play the national anthem in keeping with longstanding league policy.

So an interesting situation has developed here, and I'm thrilled to now welcome in Mavericks team owner Mark Cuban will have Team CEO sent Marshall joining us in a minute as well.

But Mark, take me through a little bit how you guys came to this decision and then what the conversations were in the past 24 hours that led to this morning.

There is the release issued by the league overturning that.

Let me take you because there's a lot of misinformation out there.

Um, first we were always talking to our community.

I mean, that's something since stands for, and it is very insistent apart and has become a a core part of who we are at the Dallas Mavericks and listening to the community, there were quite a few people that voice their.

Their concerns were really there were fears that the national anthem and did not fully represented not fully represent them, that their voices were not being heard.

And so we've had a lot of conversations about whether or not we should play the anthem.

And so during the first pre season game, we decided toe not play it and just see what the response waas Um, knowing that we were going to have ongoing conversations about it, we didn't make any decision.

Thio never play the national anthem.

That wasn't the case at all.

We didn't cancel the national anthem.

We still had our flag flying proud and up on the wall of the American Airlines Center, and everybody had the opportunity to address it and, you know, pray to it or salute to it.

Or however whatever their feelings are on DWI, you know, as the games went by, you know, honestly, we we kept on talking about what we were going to do at some point, but obviously it came to the head when it was reported that at one of our games, Um, that we hadn't played it.

But, you know, the bottom line is we had always discussed the fact that we probably won't end up playing it at some point.

Probably went.

Fans came back, but there was never any final decision that had made that we would not play the anthem.

And then what were the conversations you had over the past 24 hours since it came into the news that you guys had not been playing it since someone noticed frankly and started asking about it?

What was the back and forth between you and the league office?

Nothing, really.

I mean, I talked to him, though, Adam, um, and got his feedback and gave him my feedback that, you know, we had people who were upset by it, and we're passionate and then being upset.

And we had people that fully supported it that you know, a lot of people said that they don't understand why you know, the anthem is played prior to a game.

Others said, you know, it shouldn't be played prior to the game.

Others said it didn't represent them, and they're concerned about being played and it made them uncomfortable, and we talked about all the different feedback that we had received.

And how did they come to the decision then that everybody would play the anthem, including the Mavericks?

Did you have that conversation first, before the press release went out?

Or did you learn from basically, you know, as I mentioned earlier, we had never decided that we weren't going to play the anthem when we had fans in, You know, we had some fans in last game, but they were all health care workers and people we were honoring.

They weren't our ticket holders or season ticket holders at all.

So, you know, we don't know, You 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 are paying fans are season ticket holders back in the arena that we would address it them.

So was this press release your first sort of information?

That okay, this is gonna be the policy now going forward league wide.

You mean from the league?

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, of course.

You know, But, I mean, I knew the press release was coming and we're in full agreement with.

We have no problem playing the national anthem at all.

I stand for the national anthem.

My hand is always over my heart.

We've supported the National Flag Foundation and done work with them.

You know that isn't the issue at all.

That the real issue is How do you How do you express the voices of those who feel the anthem doesn't represent them or causing them consternation?

And how do you do that going forward?

Well, that's That's why we have sent, you know, that that's programs that we're setting up with sent, You know, we listen, learn, we unite.

We you know, we have courageous conversations and we'll have many more of those, you know, with our current players, with our former players with keep people in community.

We have de Mac, which are our organization of people from the community that we listen to on these issues.

You know, we don't do this in a vacuum.

We make these decisions after having talked to and listening and and making sure that, you know our goal is to have all voices are not just the loudest.

Voices were hoping to have sent on with us right now having some technical difficulties so we might be able to get her back later in the show.

So I will just ask you.

For now, though, Mark, you may now face potential backlash.

Kind of in both directions.

You were talking about the feedback you got from people saying the anthem doesn't represent them.

But of course, there are a lot of people who feel very strongly that the anthem should be played before games.

What kind of backlash might you expect from that side?

I mean, you know, when you tryto do things that are hard, it's never going to be easy, right?

When you try to, you know, create social change, it's never going to be easy.

We saw that all summer long.

You know, we listen to people, and you know, there are a lot of people who tried to stand up for what they believed in and weren't really hard weren't really heard.

Rather, you know, these are difficult conversations that are not going to go away whether or not we play the national anthem, you know, we're just you know, it said to me, we're just glad that we're having this conversation out of choice, not because of some tragedy that ignited the conversation.

I was going to have it.

I know that you said that you went sort of back and forth and conversations with the league leading up to this.

Did you consider maybe bringing this up in a board of governors meeting, or would you still do that?

Have a more of a conversation league wide on what the MBA should be doing here?

You know, we'll have ongoing conversations.

We obviously had a lot of those this summer.

And we have a lot of ongoing conversations with our players, the Players Association, because this is this is an issue that's important to us.

This is not something that goes away.

You know, there is systemic racism in this country.

There are people who are afraid to walk down the street.

In this country, there are people when we talk about injustice for all who don't receive justice for all you know.

And that is a problem.

So this is a conversation we have to have now.

You know is the anthem.

You know, maybe an initiator to those conversations.

Then that's great.

But That's the farm or important thing.

And that that was the genesis of everything that we've done well.

We will look forward to seeing how all of that develops.

Mark, Thank you so much for joining us today.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me, Rachel.

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