Lakers skip White House, extending champs’ streak
An NBA team has not celebrated a championship with a White House visit since 2016.
LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers will not end that streak any time soon.
“Due to covid restrictions and scheduling, we weren’t able to host them at the White House during their D.C. trip,” according to a White House statement to The Washington Post’s Tyler Pager on Sunday night. “We are in close communication with them about other options.”
The “D.C. trip” referred to in the statement would be the team’s April 28 game at the Washington Wizards. But that window is narrow, with the Lakers playing in Orlando on April 26 and back in Los Angeles on April 30, and is complicated by coronavirus protocols at the White House and in the NBA.
The playoffs are scheduled to run from May 22 to July 22, meaning a new champion, barring a Lakers repeat, would be in place by midsummer.
James and the Cleveland Cavaliers were the last NBA champions to visit the White House in November 2016, when President Barack Obama entertained them on the same day that he met with the newly elected Donald Trump.
The first NBA team to win an NBA title after Trump took office was the 2016-17 Warriors, but after Stephen Curry said the team had no interest in visiting a president with whom they had major differences, Trump declared an expected invitation to be “withdrawn.” When the Warriors arrived in Washington to play the Wizards in March 2018, they instead toured the National Museum of African American History and Culture with a group of local schoolchildren. After repeating as champions at the end of the 2017-18 season, the Warriors used their annual trip to D.C. to visit Obama’s private office.
For the Toronto Raptors, who beat the Warriors in the 2019 NBA Finals, a White House visit was “a hard no,” Danny Green, then with team, said.
In January, Yahoo Sports reported that Lakers’ players and team management “see it as a pleasure and an honor to have their accomplishment recognized by the incoming president.”
That followed a tweet in which James suggested that he’d be receptive to a visit, telling
Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors on Twitter, “YO we back up in there my G! I’m taking my tequila and vino too!” James campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and called Trump a “bum” the following year, then endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket just before Election Day.
Trivia question
Stewart Cink won for the third time at Harbour Town Golf Links on Sunday. Tiger Woods holds the record for most PGA wins at one course. Woods won eight times at which three courses?