Fresh off the New York Knicks’ 2026 NBA Championship victory, the team’s stars Jalen Brunson, OG Anunoby, and more are celebrating their win everywhere from 30 Rock (where they hosted a special episode of The Tonight Show) to the city’s streets. Their victory came after an incredible playoff run in which the Knicks won 14 games in a row—a streak that ended June 8, the only game that happened to have President Donald Trump in the audience.
Given that, some voices on social media have been speculating that the new champions will not make a visit to the White House to celebrate their win, a trip that’s often been customary for champion sports teams.
According to a White House official, that’s not true. “This is fake news,” the official told Vanity Fair. “The White House congratulates the Knicks on their championship win and looks forward to discussing a visit in the near future.” A spokesperson for the Knicks and representatives for the NBA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Which members of this team might be interested in visiting the Trump White House? It’s true that the Knicks’ current roster don’t have any dyed-in-the-wool liberal activists—unlike say, the Golden State Warriors, home of prominent Kamala Harris supporter Steph Curry. But in general, American basketball players do lean left. A January 2026 analysis of public voting data by polling site VoteHub found that only 10% of NBA players identified as Republicans, while the rest were split between identifying as Democrats or Independents. Then again, as New York sports commentator Boomer Esiason argued on his show Monday, the Knicks’ owner, James Dolan, is a close friend of Trump; he might try to persuade his players to make such a trip regardless of political valence.
If the Knicks do make it to DC, though, they’ll be bucking a long-running trend. No NBA team visited the White House during Trump’s first term. After the Oklahoma City Thunder won the NBA championship in 2025, the team expressed some interest in visiting Trump—but ultimately decided against it. In a statement, the team told The Athletic they had “been in touch with the White House” and “were appreciative and grateful” to be invited there. Still, “the timing just didn’t work out.” (In 2024, the 2023 champion Denver Nuggets also skipped out on an invite from the Biden administration, citing scheduling issues—though the Celtics visited after their championship win later that year.)
Winning NBA teams began visiting the White House when President John F. Kennedy invited the Boston Celtics for a confab back in 1963. Generations of players followed their example—but the practice has become more fraught in the age of accelerating partisanship. Trump set the tone for his kind of post-championship celebration back in 2019, when he invited the Clemson Tigers—that year’s NCAA football champions—to the White House for a McDonald’s feast during a government shutdown. “I served them massive amounts of Fast Food (I paid), over 1000 hamburgers etc,” he tweeted that same day. “Within one hour, it was all gone. Great guys and big eaters!”
Trump’s 2024 campaign was fueled by bro podcasts and sports betting companies. In his second term, the president has increasingly made time for athletic competitions. In 2025, he became the first sitting president ever to attend a Super Bowl. Afterward, the winning Philadelphia Eagles visited the White House—without the 12 members of their roster who declined to attend. In 2026, Trump told the New York Post that he wouldn’t travel to San Francisco to attend that year’s game because it was “too far.” The president denied that his decision had anything to do with a potentially poor reception from the California crowd. He added, “I’ve [gotten] great hands [at] the Super Bowl. They like me.”
