Stan Van Gundy tweets about the anthem

I agree. Totally pointless.

While I generally disagree with literally everything Stan says, I agree with this one. Playing the anthem before games has always been bizarre to me.

What I don’t agree with is WHY they are stopping playing it.

It’s a relic of WWI and WWII military recruitment and PR that in modern times has morphed into a fairly empty display of pageantry often in service of stoking a jingoistic flavor of patriotism and cultural identity.

People say they want politics out of their sports but then they demand to keep a politically rooted performative act of pageantry that, amongst other things, has increasingly been used to launder and smooth down complex American foreign policy into simple narratives about “freedom” and “exceptionalism” and promote recruitment(the military partially justifies their millions a year in flyovers, bands, marches, and such as recruitment tools) as a means to rally support for recent and continued acts of American military adventurism(see the notable rise in military involvement in sports after 9/11 and the run up to Iraq).

The founding fathers didn’t want monuments, loyalty tests, pageantry, and excessive idolatry, but yet here we are morphing the beginning of basically every American sport into a measuring stick in the minds of many Americans for whether you are sufficiently loyal and respectful by way of pressuring social adherence to a list of gestures aimed toward idolatry and symbols in service of a simplistic and dumbed down concept of patriotism.

My understanding of the anthem compared to other activities is that it's an homage to the Olympics since the national anthems of the respective countries is played prior to every contest. Sports were initially created to honor the Gods and then it became about honoring country "in combat". It's tradition.

I will be honest yall, I always thought it was sort of odd but it was fine as its what we did. It certainly isnt something that should be forced upon any team.

That would be a great idea. I would love to see that as well as frontline workers during this time.

The anthem is weird. The weirdest thing is kids saying the pledge. I always felt pretty awkward pledging my allegiance every morning before learning about right angles and shite.

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What I don’t agree with is WHY they are stopping playing it.

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I assumed he stopped playing it because it's an unneeded distraction, has he said his reason?

Playing the anthem and watching people sing it has always been a part of the entertainment. Leave it to the cancel culture and everything is racists party to ruin the moment of unity we shared together. While they are all getting paid millions to play a game of basketball, instead of bitching about why they are the only ones having the anthem played, they should take it as a privilege that they are one of the last venues demonstrating such patriot pride. I also don't have much of an issue with if anthems are played before teams come out of the tunnel. The anthem shouldn't be about the players or what the frick their self privileged asses think is right or wrong about it.

Shut the frick up Chad.