{"id":550322,"date":"2026-03-21T02:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T02:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/550322\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T02:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T02:56:08","slug":"nba-champion-oklahoma-city-thunder-wont-visit-white-house-during-trip-to-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/550322\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder won\u2019t visit White House during trip to Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The reigning NBA champion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nba\/team-page\/oklahoma-city-thunder\/25\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nba\/team-page\/oklahoma-city-thunder\/25\" target=\"_blank\">Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> will not visit the White House during their road trip to the nation\u2019s capital this weekend, a team spokesperson said Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The team and the White House had discussions about a celebration of the 2025 champs, but \u201ctiming\u201d prevented it from happening.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cWe have been in touch with the White House, and we are appreciative and grateful for the communication we have had, but the timing just didn\u2019t work out,\u201d the Thunder said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Visiting the White House has been a long-standing tradition for NBA champions, dating back to Boston\u2019s trip in 1963. Teams typically schedule the celebration when a regular-season game brings them to the nation\u2019s capital. The Thunder play Washington on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Several teams have declined invitations in recent years, most notably the NBA\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nba\/team-page\/golden-state-warriors\/9\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nba\/team-page\/golden-state-warriors\/9\" target=\"_blank\">Golden State Warriors<\/a> in 2017.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Last month, the gold-medal-winning U.S. men\u2019s hockey team attended the State of the Union following an invitation from President Donald Trump. The team also attended an event in the Oval Office with Trump and had lunch at the White House.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Trump also invited the gold-medal-winning U.S. women\u2019s hockey team to the State of the Union, but the women decided not to attend, citing \u201cthe timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">___<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The reigning NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder will not visit the White House during their&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,714,82],"class_list":["post-550322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-politics","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}