LEAGUE STARS REFLECT ON US ‘HOOPSTER IN CHIEF’
Former president Obama never baulks on an opportunity to express his love for basketball, writes Jeff Zillgitt
Former US president Barack Obama was our basketball president, the hoopster in chief. He loves the game — watching it, attending games, creating relationships with players, coaches and executives and, when he was younger, playing it.
“The only thing that’s better than watching basketball is playing basketball,” Obama said when the Los Angeles Lakers visited the White House in 2010 to celebrate their 2009 championship.
He once said he would like to be part-owner of a team and wasn’t shy about using basketball metaphors in relation to world events.
He fell in love with the game as a kid in Hawaii, spurred by his father, who gave him a basketball, and his grandfather, who took him to a University of Hawaii men’s game.
“I decided to become part of that world, and began going down to a playground near my grandparents’ apartment after school,” Obama wrote in the book Dreams from My Father. “From her bedroom window ten stories up, Toot [his grandmother] would watch me on the court until well after dark as I threw the ball with two hands at first, then developed an awkward jump shot, a crossover dribble, absorbed in the same solitary moves hour after hour.”
He learned more about the game from his brother-in-law Craig Robinson, who played at Princeton and coached at Oregon State and Brown and now works in the Milwaukee Bucks’ front office.
While Obama liked filling out March Madness men’s and women’s brackets and attending WNBA games, he gravitated towards the NBA and its players and has a deep affinity for Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, who won six championships while Obama lived in the city as a young lawyer and politician.
He talked with front-office executives and owners as smoothly as he talked with players. Obama engendered profound goodwill with players, and he is so beloved by the NBA community that players in a predominantly African-American league are unwilling to commit to a White House visit under Donald Trump.
“It will be awhile before we see a president relate to sports and basketball like President Obama,” Toronto Raptors President Masai Ujiri told USA TODAY Sports.
As Obama left office, USA TODAY Sports got information from people involved with the NBA on their relationship with the president.
LEBRON JAMES
When Cleveland Cavaliers star James was just a kid from Akron in the late 1980s and 1990s, it’s doubtful he imagined having a friendship with the commander in chief.
“Never in a million years did I think I would be this close with a president of the United States with the No.1 biggest position of power in the world,” James told reporters after visiting the White House in November. “We just have a real genuine relationship. We’ve got so many things in common we can talk about, not only from sports but community service and growing up in the inner city and figuring out ways that we can help the youth.”
It extends to Michelle Obama, who has hammed it up with James during his White House visits, including her participation in the mannequin challenge in November.
The first lady and James have supported each other’s philanthropic efforts, too.
“I never take it for granted when I get an opportunity to be around the president, be around the first lady,” James said. “They’ve become really good friends, and that’s something that’s special to me and my family.”
If you search online for photos or videos of Obama and James, it’s clear how at ease they are with each other. The respect and admiration are obvious.
“Michelle’s brother, who was an excellent basketball player, always says that you can learn a lot about somebody’s character by the way they play basketball,” Obama said during the Cavaliers’ White House visit in November. “And when you see LeBron James, it is not just his power and his speed and his vertical. It is his unselfishness. It is his work ethic. It is his insistence on always making the right play. It is his determination. All of which makes him one of the great players of all time.”
ADAM SILVER
NBA commissioner Silver has met Obama a handful of times and knows that Obama likes to track games on League Pass late at night while going through reports.
In their brief encounters, Silver told USA TODAY Sports, “There was never a doubt he was a hardcore fan. He could speak knowledgeably about teams, rosters and starting line-ups. He knew the league.”
But what stands most out to Silver is Obama’s willingness to assist in coaching his daughter Sasha’s basketball team. Silver heard stories from friend and fellow Duke grad Reggie Love, who was a special assistant to the president and another assistant coach.
“As a father and a basketball lover, he made sure that he carved the time out of his incredibly busy schedule to do it,” Silver said. “He clearly took joy in helping those young girls learn the game and the associated values of the game.”
REGGIE JACKSON
In December, the Detroit Pistons toured the White House. They were not scheduled to see the president, but if a basketball team is at the White House and the president is in town, there’s a good chance Obama will squeeze in a few minutes to say hello.
Pistons guard Jackson tried to introduce himself to the president, but Obama interrupted, saying, “I know who you are.”
“When you introduce yourself to the president and he tells you he knows you, that was a different moment,” Jackson told reporters.
MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES
When the Timberwolves visited the White House this month, guard Ricky Rubio said the president told players they needed to play better defence.
Few things this season probably have made Timberwolves coach Tom Thibodeau happier than Obama preaching defence.
“Presidential order,” Thibodeau said. Obama even referred to Zach LaVine as “Mr Dunk Champ.”
STEPHEN CURRY
Curry, the Golden State Warriors superstar, has met Obama multiple times, including playing two rounds of golf with him and on at least two White House visits.
“To be alive and able to be a part of, or to witness, how much he has changed our country for the better, it’s history he has made for the last eight years,” Curry told USA TODAY Sports. “And for me to have met him, spent two golf rounds with him, got to see him kind of outside of his normal element, it was an unbelievable experience to just talk. And he was very open with me, just about pre-presidency, his perspective on life, and how that has changed since he’s been in the office.”
Curry made it clear he wasn’t comparing the scrutiny he receives to the scrutiny a president receives, but he did appreciate hearing Obama’s perspective.
“I don’t want to overstate this, but there are certain parallels about things he goes through in the president’s office when it comes to just being under the spotlight, being accountable for literally every single decision that he makes, how it affects people, and just dealing with scrutiny, dealing with critics, dealing with all the nonsense that he has to,” Curry said. “It was refreshing to just hear that perspective from him.”