The University of North Carolina’s championship-winning men’s basketball team won’t make the customary visit to the White House, a team spokesman said Saturday.
The Tar Heels attributed the decision to scheduling difficulties rather than political animus for President Trump. But the announcement came on the same day that Trump rescinded Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry’s invitation to the White House in response to the NBA star’s reported hesitance to make the trip.
“We couldn’t find a date that worked for both parties,” Steve Kirschner, the basketball team’s spokesman, told the News and Observer. “We tried about eight or nine dates and between they couldn’t work out that date, we couldn’t work out that date, so — we would have liked to have gone, but not going.”
It is traditional for sports teams that win their league’s national title to visit the White House for a public event. It’s also common for some members of the team to decline to visit as a way of registering opposition to the president. Baltimore Ravens center Matt Birk declined to make the trip in 2013, for instance, citing then-President Barack Obama’s outspoken support for Planned Parenthood.
But Curry’s reported disinterest in celebrating the Warriors’ NBA title with Trump provoked a pushback from the president. “Going to the White House is considered a great honor for a championship team,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “Stephen Curry is hesitating,therefore invitation is withdrawn!”
The Golden State Warriors responded by confirming that the entire team would skip the White House trip. “[W]e accept that President Trump has made it clear that we are not invited,” the organization said Saturday. “In lieu of a visit to the White House, we have decided that we’ll constructively use our trip to the nation’s capital in February to celebrate equality, diversity and inclusion — the values that we embrace as an organization.”
UNC players were ‘fine with going,” according to the team, but coach Roy Williams was non-committal when the topic was raised in April. “[T]he office of the presidency of the United States is the most fantastic place you can be,” Williams said. “But let me think on it.”
