First posted on Instagram
President Donald Trump called for a boycott of the WNBA in a social media post on Thursday night, urging fans to walk away from the league after the players of both teams in the WNBA Finals left the court during the national anthem in all three games of the series. "You should do the same thing with women's basketball unless they fix it," he said in the post.
Seconds before the anthem began in Game 1 of the Finals at Chase Center in San Francisco last Saturday, the players of the Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries jogged off the court and did not return until the performance ended. They repeated it in Game 2 on Monday, when Alanis Morissette sang the anthem, and again in Game 3 on Wednesday night at State Farm Arena in Atlanta — three straight games with both teams absent for "The Star-Spangled Banner." Videos of the empty court circulated widely on social media.
The two teams have said leaving the floor is part of their pregame routine. Neither the WNBA, the two teams nor the NBA has answered questions about the repeated absences or whether any disciplinary action is being considered, and Commissioner Cathy Engelbert's league has issued no public statement on the matter.
The league's own rulebook says: "Players, coaches, and trainers are to stand and line up in a dignified posture along the sidelines or the free throw line during the playing of the national anthem." But the WNBA suspended its anthem protocol years ago and has since left pregame anthem decisions to the teams, and no player has been disciplined in this series. Former player and coach Rennae Stubbs called the viral claim that the players broke an enforced league rule a "flat out lie" for that reason, and five-time NBA champion Ron Harper backed the teams, posting: "It's the team choice not yours."
The criticism from the president's own family came a day earlier. Lara Trump told Fox News on Thursday that walking out on the anthem was "so disgraceful," showing disrespect "to every veteran out there, to every gold-star family out there, to every person who has served our country," and warned the league it was forgetting "how harmful it was to the NFL when people started doing this sort of thing." Former ESPN anchor Sage Steele said in a social media video that the players are free to express themselves, "but there's a cost to it," and that the lack of respect "is going to turn fans away forever." Some fans have called for the players to be barred from the U.S. Olympic team — Dream stars Angel Reese and Rhyne Howard both stood on court for the anthem while playing for Team USA at the FIBA Women's World Cup in Germany earlier this year.
The anthem fight has long roots in the league. In 2017 the WNBA fined three teams and their players for wearing protest shirts during warmups, then rescinded the fines after a public backlash, and WNBA players were at the center of the anthem protests of 2020. The NFL's parallel history ended the same way: its 2018 policy fining teams for kneeling players was frozen within weeks and never meaningfully enforced again.
On the court, Atlanta leads the series two games to one after winning Game 3, 97-71, behind 21 points and 12 rebounds from Reese — after the Dream won Game 2, 79-65, with Reese scoring 30. Game 4 is scheduled for Saturday in Atlanta, with the anthem controversy now overshadowing the championship series itself.