When the Golden State Warriors wrapped up their second championship in three years on Monday night in Oracle Arena, the summer-long celebration began as Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and the rest had fulfilled their destiny as champions. There were only two main questions people had about the Warriors’ 2017 championship team. Where they rank among the greatest title teams of all-time? Would they go on a White House visit to see Donald Trump?
The first question will be debated for years, but the second is one the Warriors will eventually have to answer. There was a somewhat sketchy report on Tuesday morning that the Warriors were planning on skipping the visit, but the team denied that a decision had been made on that front, noting that they first have to be invited.
The invite seems inevitable, and the question won’t stop until an actual answer is given. On Wednesday, Steph Curry offered something more concrete when asked about the White House visit issue, noting that his answer hadn’t changed from earlier in the year, but that the team still needed to have that conversation and come to an agreement.
Steph Curry saying, at this point, he wouldn't go to White House, but team hasn't had discussion pic.twitter.com/zVWo7qRj0Y
— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) June 14, 2017
“Somebody asked me about it a couple months ago, the hypothetical, if a championship were to happen what would I do, and I think I answered, ‘I wouldn’t go,’ and I still feel like that today,” Curry said. “Obviously as a team we’re going to need to have a conversation. This is a moment that we all need to enjoy together. Nothing should distract from what we were able to accomplish together, and the different kinds of ceremonies and traditions that have happened around championship winning teams, we don’t want that to taint what we’ve accomplished this year. So we’ll handle that accordingly and responsibly and like I said do the right thing for us individually and as a group.”
This certainly isn’t confirmation that the Warriors won’t go, but it’s telling that one of their stars says that if it were up to him he wouldn’t attend. Considering Andre Iguodala already said he plans to follow Curry’s lead, that makes it at least possible that the Warriors could, as a whole, decide to pass on the visit to Trump’s White House. We’ve seen players skip those ceremonies in the past, including some Patriots this year, but not an entire team. For the Warriors, this is going to be an interesting decision, but as Curry notes it will come down to what they feel is the best thing to do for them as individuals and the group.
That means they’ll have to decide whether, considering the division in the country over Trump, it’s better to skip or not for each of their personal brands and the team’s brand as a whole. The NBA tends to live on the more liberal end of the spectrum, but for a number of Golden State’s top stars — including Curry — they have personal brands tied to shoe contracts and more that must be considered.
