When Donald Trump was elected President back in November, one of the first things that many sports fans wondered was, "Does this mean sports teams are going to stop visiting the White House after they win titles?" The practice has been in place for a long time now, but there have been a lot of pro athletes who have spoken out against Trump’s policies in the past, which led to some fans speculating about whether those athletes would ever set foot in the White House once Trump took office.
Warriors players seemed to answer the question everyone asked in November on Tuesday morning when reports started to come out indicating they would not visit the White House after winning the 2017 NBA Finals. Those reports pointed to a tweet sent out by CNBC’s Josh Brown as evidence that the Warriors had unanimously decided to skip a visit with Trump:
But were the reports actually true? A lot of people took Brown’s tweet at face value and ran with it. They praised the Warriors for being "woke" and applauded them for being the first team to turn down an invitation to the White House following Trump’s takeover:
However, it seems as though Brown’s tweet wasn't based on any inside information that he gathered from a Warriors source. Rather, Vocativ is reporting that Brown sent his tweet out after seeing this tweet that was sent out by Mike Sington, the former director of operations at Universal Studios:
And it doesn’t appear as though Sington has any inside information about the Warriors, either. As Vocativ pointed out, he has posted a number of "exclusive" news items that have not been sourced in the past, and it seems as though many of them have featured him predicting the news rather than reporting it.
So where does that leave us? Well, many publications—including major publications like Newsweek—have taken the original story and run with it, so there is a ton of confusion surrounding whether or not the Warriors will actually make their way to the White House. So much confusion that the Warriors put out a statement on Tuesday afternoon to shoot down the White House reports and to indicate that they haven't even received an invitation to Washington, D.C. yet, let alone made a decision as to whether they will accept it. San Jose Mercury News writer Anthony Slater shared the statement:
All of that being said, there’s still a good chance that the Warriors won’t make their way to the White House to celebrate their second NBA title in three years. Golden State head coach Steve Kerr and players like Steph Curry and David West have been critical of Trump in the past, which could prevent them from receiving an invitation in the first place. And even if they do get one, there could be a number of players and coaches who don’t want to attend, which could mean the entire team will decide not to go.
Either way, the bottom line is that no definitive decision has been made just yet, regardless of what you may have read on the internet on Tuesday. So carry on and continue to debate the outcome of the Finals, rather than worrying about the Warriors’ trip to the White House. There will be plenty of time to worry about that later.
