Two WNBA Finals Teams Leave Court for National Anthem, Return After It Ends
“And a writer from SF Gate decried how ‘conservative media can’t stop complaining’ about personnel deciding to leave the floor.”
I’m not quite sure which is worse: that both teams playing in the WNBA Finals exited the court before the national anthem and returned when it ended, or that sports journalists in the legacy media either failed to cover it or ridiculed the conservative media for complaining.
OutKick’s Matt Calkins reported:
Before Games 1 and 2 of the WNBA Finals, both the Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries walked off the court before the singing of the Star Spangled Banner, only to return as soon as it was over. Yet, besides OutKick, I couldn’t find a single instance of credentialed media covering the Finals even mentioning this. The San Jose Mercury News lauded Alanis Morissette’s rendition before Game 2, but didn’t appear to care that players weren’t on the court for it. And a writer from SF Gate decried how “conservative media can’t stop complaining” about personnel deciding to leave the floor.
Un-American @WNBA teams leave the floor for the NATIONAL ANTHEM and return right after.
Disrespectful trash. pic.twitter.com/DzcKXdKPmP
— Kentucky Girl (@Kentuckygirl1) October 20, 2026
Actually, I shouldn’t say that no major outlet covered it. The Associated Press did address the story, but only to explain why the behavior was okay. [Emphasis added.]
Their absence created somewhat of a stir on social media. However, it’s been common practice for many WNBA teams over at least the past six seasons to leave the court with 10 minutes left in pregame warmups — right before “The Star-Spangled Banner” is played. Teams have left to raise awareness for social justice issues or simply to continue to get ready for the game.
The WNBA rulebook states: “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.”
@WillCainShow https://t.co/yuEGOO9EPH
— William Terkeurst (@OutsideTheBbox) October 20, 2026
The Associated Press explained that these “protocols were suspended years ago.”
Late in the 2017 season, the league suspended its protocols, saying in a memo to teams that players and coaches didn’t have to follow them. The memo was sent to allow players to show support for victims in the wake of a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that occurred that summer.
Three years later in 2020, teams left the court before the anthem as the WNBA dedicated that season to Breonna Taylor, who was killed in her Louisville, Kentucky, home.
…
Since 2020, many teams still leave the court before the anthem is played.
League officials may have granted teams permission to skip the anthem, but the visual of watching an entire team jog off the court rather than show a moment’s respect for the country that has given them such extraordinary opportunities does tremendous damage to the WNBA brand. To many fans, it sends a message of contempt for America.
Add to the mix a season’s worth of negative headlines, including league officials’ willingness to look the other way when antagonistic players target stars like Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham, and their refusal to define what a woman is, and it’s little wonder fans are getting fed up.
In the video below, OutKick’s Craig Carton asks, “Does every single player on both teams really want to run into the locker room and not show some respect for the flag? I cannot believe … that out of the 20-plus WNBA players … that not a single one of those gals has the courage to stand up to the mob and say, ‘You do you. I’ll do me. And I was raised right.'”
Not ONE player willing to stay on the court for the national anthem? 🇺🇸🤨@craigcartonlive GOES OFF on both WNBA Finals teams and says someone needs to have the courage to break from the crowd. pic.twitter.com/8Iv4bGSwUp
— OutKick (@Outkick) October 20, 2026
On Fox News, contributor Joe Concha pointed out that before Caitlyn Clark’s team, the Indiana Fever, got knocked out of the playoffs, 2.7 million viewers tuned in. Since the Fever was eliminated, viewership has dropped to approximately one million.
The WNBA players are certainly entitled to make a statement, but they shouldn’t be surprised when fans make one of their own by tuning out.
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Comments
This is a p1ss take! WNBA do everything in its power to alienate pretty much anyone with money!
I understand that there is no such thing as bad publicity and that the WNBA has made bank, big time, over the white girls, but this is best described as: TRASH.
And people wonder why Trump won, at least twice.
To understand the WNBA you have to realize that they have never had to make a profit. They are a non-profit organization. They act like a group that doesn’t care if they insult their customers. Because they don’t. When they finally get a player that could help them actually turn a profit, they sabotage her.
Will the winning team from this “championship” be willing to play aeries against the high school champions from the city they call home?
That would draw a crowd.
“The WNBA players are certainly entitled to make a statement, but they shouldn’t be surprised when fans make one of their own by tuning out.”
I never tuned in.
Not that I would have been there in the first place, but if I had been in the stands and watched the teams leave the court during the National Anthem, I would have left as soon as the Anthem had finished, and the teams returned.
Their behavior was disgraceful, and just plain stupid.
A ball game is not a patriotic event. The anthem is there historically to get the crowd to shut up and pay attention and stop milling around. It was enforced by self-appointed patriots.
Same as flag salutes and Bible readings at the start of the school day.
Tiresome flatulence from the site’s resident curmudgeon.
A good point about forcing patriotism on people, since a large % of USA residents are revolting. Back in high school I was at a Rolling Stones concert at a big exhibition hall, and one of the group was an exchange student from Germany. Commenting on the large American flag on the wall he said in Germany “they would have torn [the German flag] down.
On the other hand, jettisoning respect for our nation and its Judeo Christian heritage is shameful.
PS I have no interest in watching women’s pro basketball.
Your mother’s wedding was merely a symbolic event; the marriage is granted in the licensing. The fact that your father (or the groom) walked out without taking the vows is irrelevant.
You marry each other. Everybody else is a witness.
There’s actually a deep pattern in marriage ceremony. You’ve both already said yes, but the ceremony with witnesses is saying yes to that yes, which constitutes a signature. As if you’ve just been trying it out and now finalize it.
The signature effect is pretty universal.
You’re assuming his parents were married or that he even knows his dad.
The anthem is there historically to get the crowd to shut up and pay attention and stop milling around. It The anthem is there historically to get the crowd to shut up and pay attention and stop milling around. It was enforced by self-appointed patriots.was enforced by self-appointed patriots.
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you’re certainly entitled to your opinion–believe you misunderstand the meaning / purpose of playing / singing the anthem–have sung it / played it / performed it hundreds of times in this life and was never to ” get the crowd to shut up and pay attention and stop milling around. “
What’s it say about your barely solvent sportsball league with nearly negative ratings while players demand NBA salaries when more people watch a blooper reel about bilbos thrown on the court and white girl boss grills up against the entitled sisters as zebras sulk around frightened of all that estrogen gone wild?
It mean the Lingerie Flag Football League is far more entertaining.
Bilbos?!? Why are you throwing hobbits anywhere, much less onto a sports court?! OK, I could see if dwarfs were involved, along with a lot of mead, but seriously, have you no shame?
/Mr Baggins of BagEnd, Esq.
(Yes, I know what word you were bowdlerizing. But I couldn’t resist.)
Oh! I thought “bilbo” was old-timey basketball slang, like “fungo” in baseball.
lol, no the green silicone tubes were getting flung at an alarming rate for a reason I’m still not sure of but it was pretty funny.
Men of Culture watch Greek Longjumping on Youtube, assuming we have the extra 8 hrs that it requires. The video says that it is only 2 minutes long, but I think that number is incorrect in my experience, just sayin.
Barely solvent? Not even close. Since it’s founding it still hasn’t shown a profit existing only through massive funding from the NBA. Why they would waste money like that is a mystery to me but it’s their money I guess.
I have heard of someone shooting themselves in the foot bot not both! This league is like watching one of the videos of a cop making a simple car stop and watching a moron, usually a black woman, turn it into a felony. I have never seen anything mismanaged this badly! Well, maybe Social Security!
The WNBA was on the cusp of turning the corner and actually having fans. Then . . . . they looked the other way when one of their most valuable assets was mugged by the thugs and then they stick their thumb in the eye of those fans who love America. If the players hate it so badly, they should then adopt the European leagues as their home. And, don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split you.
“Oh, you want to play somewhere other than America? OK, then, GO.”
I would love to watch that saga. Their pay would possibly go down from their current feeble compensation (according to their own egos). Their viewership would probably drop even further. AND they would be learning all those lessons the folks in that Wired column about US expats have been learning (mostly that America is a pretty great place, when compared to their European Utopia).
Even European soccer fans now appreciate the US more than these entitled GB’s.
The Womyns Lesbian and Negro Basketball Association can do anything they want, just not on our time and dime. Their allegiance is to another culture with America a geographic place to make money in. Separate but (more than) equal. Everything the KKK wanted is now what they want. Segregation, gun control, euthanasia, one party rule, one dominating race, anti-religious (no Catholics,Jews or certain other Christian groups).
But us Americans are somehow misogynistic and racist for not watching this passel of ingrates.
“And a writer from SF Gate decried how “conservative media can’t stop complaining” about personnel deciding to leave the floor.”
Just like the MSM can’t stop complaining that MAGA personalities are “election deniers.”
Don Imus has a few words on the point …
How many of the crowd were just homeless trying to get warm and dry?
It never occurred to me that the WNBA has been “papering the house.”
What a ridiculous bunch of individuals. They don’t know what a women is, nor respect the country that makes it possible for the ridiculous salaries they receive. Were they kneeling just out of sight?
I do not understand why the Rich support the WNBA. I believe that the will disappear in a couple of years.
I was watching one of those games and they didn’t show the players leaving or coming back and made zero mention of it. So their “protest “ kind of fell flat. Likely the people in the audience didn’t really notice or care either. Instead the broadcasters showed the audience standing , the flag and the performance. Really no anti American message was delivered, as the announcers said nothing. While the players may still think it’s 2020 the rest of us have moved on including their own broadcast.
Boycott it
The WNBA like the rest of the major leagues can just fold up and go away for these ungrateful bas****ds.
If these players, teams, leagues don’t want to demonstrate basic respect for their Citizens and their Nation that is their choice to make. That said there should definitely be meaningful consequences for defusing to clear a basic threshold. I suggest permanent ban on any participation in international competition on any US Team for the players, coaches, team or league staff. For the team bar federal tax breaks so no taking a ‘loss’ for WNBA losing $ and for the league end their antitrust exemption.
Pathetic women making women athletes look stupid.
I’m actually stunned that anyone would pay to see sub standard junior high boys basketball. I believe Clay Travis has a standing offer to donate money to charity if even one team played a high school boys team of his choice. After a few months of crickets he changed it to an 8th grade boys team. Still nothing. The black racist lesbian league doesn’t play good ball or have good people in it.
Once Caitlin Clark retires, this league will fade back into obscurity where it belongs.