American Airlines has apologized to two black professional basketball players who were kicked off a plane in Dallas after a flight attendant accused them of stealing blankets.

AA spokesman Joshua Freed said on Tuesday that Memphis Hustle guard Marquis Teague and forward Trahson Burrell boarded the flight bound for Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on Sunday at Dallas-Fort Worth international airport.

The Hustle is an NBA G-League affiliate team of the NBA Memphis Grizzlies. Teague played a year at the University of Kentucky before being drafted in the first round of the 2012 NBA draft by the Chicago Bulls. Burrell played two seasons at the University of Memphis.

The flight was operated by Envoy Air. Two first-class passengers gave the players their blankets as they headed to their seats in coach. A black flight attendant accused the two men of theft and forced them off the plane.

Freed said an airline manager apologized to the players and they later flew first-class to Sioux Falls.

“We take pride in bringing people together and we know that on this flight we let some of our customers down,” Freed said. “Our team at American, along with Envoy Air, is reviewing what happened, and will be reaching out to them.”

Hustle assistant coach Darnell Lazare said in a tweet the flight attendant saw two “young black athletes” with blankets from first class and that his first comment was “Did you steal them?”



“How about you teach people to get the facts first before jumping to conclusions,” Lazare wrote on Sunday.

In October, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) issued a “travel advisory” warning African Americans they could face discrimination when flying on AA.



The alert followed several high-profile incidents including one involving an organizer of the Women’s March who was booted from a flight after a dispute over her seat.

AA pledged to hire an outside firm to review its diversity in hiring and promotion, train all 120,000 employees to counteract implicit bias, create a special team to review passengers’ discrimination complaints, and improve resolution of employee complaints about bias.