NBA Commish Adam Silver Says Championship Teams Should Go to White House When Invited

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver believes championship-winning teams should visit the White House if they are invited.

Friday Silver said in an interview with Portland Trail Blazers guard C.J. McCollum, which was shared by The Players’ Tribune, that “Regardless of people’s personal, political views, I think that these institutions are bigger than any individual politician, any individual elected official.”

The commissioner added, “It concerns me that something like going to the White House after winning a championship, something that has been a great tradition, would become one that is partisan.

“I will say, though, even though I think that teams should make decisions as organizations, I would also respect an individual players’ decision not to go.”

Although the tradition of league champions visiting the White House didn’t become a regular occurrence until the Reagan administration, the tradition goes back to the Andrew Johnson administration in 1865 when he invited two amateur teams to the White House.

Thomas Nuemann of ESPN reported that the 17th president of the United States welcomed the Brooklyn Atlantics and Washington Nationals amateur baseball clubs to the White House.

President Ulysses S. Grant was first to host a professional team when he invited the Cincinnati Red Stockings baseball team to the White House, in 1869.

There has been considerable speculation that the NBA Champion Warriors may not attend if invited to the White House. Head coach Steve Kerr has insulted President Trump on a number of occasions calling him a “blowhard” and “ill-suited” to be president. And according to Heat Street, Warriors guard Shaun Livingston said he’d skip the ceremony when he was asked earlier in the season. Steph Curry also is a Trump detractor.

“Maybe (Trump) doesn’t (invite us) and we don’t go, or we don’t say anything and make a big deal of it, and he doesn’t make a big deal of it and we go our separate ways,” Andre Iguodala, one of the Warriors starting forwards, told USA Today. “We’re going to do what our leader (Curry) does. I think we handle (the White House situation) when it gets there. I mean, it may be different. There might be somebody different in (office). That’s a realistic thing to say though, right? So you don’t know what’s going to happen.”