Only One Club in This Finals Has Explained the Anthem Absence

The thing the country spent this week arguing about is older than the argument.

Before all three games of this Finals, both teams have been off the floor when the anthem played. The Associated Press reports it has been common practice for many WNBA teams for at least six seasons, and that Atlanta has done it the past several years. Indiana and Minnesota stayed on the court this season.

A club-by-club habit with years on it. What changed is who started pointing at it.

Page 75

The rule is one sentence, on page 75 of the 2026 WNBA Official Rule Book. "Players, coaches, and trainers are to stand and line up in a dignified posture along the sidelines or on the foul line during the playing of the National Anthem."

That is the whole provision. The word "anthem" appears in the document once, and no penalty is attached to it.

It is also not in force. AP reported on October 20 that the league's anthem protocols were suspended years ago and remain suspended, and that the league "appears to be deferring to its teams." The suspension dates to August 2017, after the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville; AP obtained the memo at the time. Atlanta was in that one, locking arms with Indiana before a game that August, per AP.

The timestamps

AP had all of it at 4:43 in the morning on October 20 -- the rule, the suspension, both clubs' histories, and the league's non-response to its requests for comment.

USA TODAY's explainer went up at 4:07 on the afternoon of October 21. In it, Golden State Valkyries guard Veronica Burton, asked before Game 2, said: "We've been doing that. That's just our pregame routine. We've been doing that since last year." Asked whether any message was intended, Burton said no.

At 5:54 that same evening, Fox News Digital published Vice President JD Vance's remarks to host Raymond Arroyo on "Arroyo Grande." "I think it's disgraceful," Vance said. Game 3 had not been played yet; the games he was asked about were the two in San Francisco.

One hour and 47 minutes separated the second published explanation from the remarks. Neither the remarks nor the coverage carrying them mentioned it.

The hole is Atlanta-shaped

Two clubs have been walking off. One has a named player and a club statement on the record: the Valkyries told AP they have kept the same pregame routine of going into the locker room for the anthem since becoming a franchise last year.

The other is in the record only in the third person: AP's "the past several years," USA TODAY's "reportedly." No Dream player, coach or club official appears anywhere in the searchable record on this. That does not mean no reporter asked. It means there is no Atlanta answer to find.

The league has announced nothing either. Its own newsroom, read Friday morning, carries ten items -- Finals recaps, previews, the officials named for this series -- and none on the anthem. Announced nothing is the claim; fines are not always published.

The part that belongs to this desk

Five of this week's articles, read end to end: AP, USA TODAY, Fox News Digital and two from Yahoo. The word "Loeffler" is in none of them.

In a letter to the WNBA commissioner reported by ESPN in July 2020, then-co-owner Kelly Loeffler, then a sitting U.S. senator from Georgia, wrote that she "adamantly oppose[d] the Black Lives Matter political movement." On July 11, 2020, the Dream's players issued a statement, reported by CNN: "Our team is united in the Movement for Black Lives." And: "This is not a political statement."

On August 4, 2020, players around the league wore "Vote Warnock" shirts, supporting the candidate challenging Loeffler for her Senate seat. Dream forward Elizabeth Williams told ESPN that day that the players had made a coordinated effort not to discuss Loeffler at all: "we didn't want to feel like we were pawns... we wanted it to be bigger than that."

On February 26, 2021, the league announced that its Boards of Governors had approved the team's sale. Loeffler and Mary Brock were the sellers. The release gives no reason beyond the transaction, and I am not going to supply one.

Atlanta leads the series two games to one and Game 4 is Saturday at one in the afternoon. The record of this week will be read later by people who were not here, and right now it has everybody's voice in it but Atlanta's.