VERIFIED QUOTE · reported 2026-10-29
“This is America, by the way, and I’ve served this country, so they can choose what they want,”
Renard Hayes · said 2026-10-29 · reported 2026-10-29
Renard Hayes defended the players' choice to leave the court before the anthem, citing his military service.
This quote was mechanically extracted from the cited article and verified as an exact substring of the source text before publication. Attribution follows the article's own wording.