Update: The Golden State Warriors said in a statement Tuesday they haven’t received an invitation to the White House yet. “We have not received an invitation to the White House, but will make those decisions, when and if necessary.”
Pettiness isn’t out of bounds in professional basketball. A day after winning their second title in three years, the Golden State Warriors have decided to try their hand at politics. Those woke Warriors will reportedly skip the traditional visit to the White House since President Trump is the current resident.
While it was already clear the Golden State Warriors rivaled the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s and the Boston Celtics of the 1980s in talent, this decision reveals they have the political finesse of ESPN and former President Jimmy Carter. Assuming early reports are true, this stunt is bumbling, poorly thought out, and doesn’t bode well.
The Warriors dethroned LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday before reportedly voting unanimously to snub the president on Tuesday. The team hasn’t released an official statement confirming their plans to skip the White House, and their reasoning isn’t clear, but we can guess.
After scoring 34 points and pulling down six rebounds in game five, maybe Stephen Curry was still upset about alleged violations of the Emoluments Clause. Or perhaps after hoisting the MVP trophy, Kevin Durant couldn’t shake speculation about Russian electoral meddling. A host of legitimate political issues like police brutality or the plight of inner cities or youth development could be at play.
Regardless of the locker room reasoning, the end result is a bunch of celebrity athletes standing up a celebrity president. That’s a bad flop.
By making basketball overtly political, the Warriors would make the same sloppy mistakes that doomed ESPN. That self-proclaimed worldwide sports leader learned the hard ways that fans subscribe for the game and tune out for lectures. They want peace and quiet and sports, not the wall-to-wall moralizing playing on loop over at CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC.
Right now fans want replays of Durant’s fourth-quarter three-pointer. They want speculation about the awkward-looking midcourt trash-talk between Tristan Thompson and David West.
They do not want sports pundits talking politics.
Of course, the Warriors are within their rights to dismiss that advice. Sitting pretty on a second championship, those millionaires can sit out White House visits. If they want to snub Trump after holding court with Obama in 2015, that’s their choice. It might even play well on the West Coast. But it would definitely alienate any of the right-leaning fans rooting for the other 29 NBA teams.
Ultimately, what the Warriors are failing to realize is that there’s a difference between winning petty political spats and succeeding as a professional athlete. We get it, Trump is more than grating. But after all, it’s not like the president is as awful as Brezhnev.
By boxing out Trump, the Warriors would be taking a play from President Carter’s failed playbook. When Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan, Carter manufactured a last-minute boycott of the 1980 Olympics. Haphazard and heavy-handed, it was an unmitigated disaster. Because of politics, those athletes missed an opportunity to play.
The same thing could happen in reverse today.
Skipping the White House hamstrings any otherwise legitimate political opinion that those players might espouse later. The players run the risk of being tuned out because of their pettiness. Mixing politics with sports didn’t work for ESPN or for Carter, and it won’t work for the Warriors no matter how “woke” they might seem.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
