On Thursday, the Boston Celtics made their visit to the White House to celebrate their 2024 NBA Finals victory with President Joe Biden, presenting the sitting president with a green No. 46 Celtics jersey as well as a commemorative ball.
White House visits by league champions is a time-honored tradition for teams across both the professional and college ranks that dates as far back as 1865 with President Andrew Johnson, but has been a regular fixture for NBA champions since 1963 when a Bill Russell-led Celtics team made the first basketball-visit with President John F. Kennedy.
Despite a packed White House South Lawn and all the pomp and circumstance, the event on Thursday generally left much to be desired. The speaking portion lasted a tad over 12 minutes, with boiler plate comments made by Biden and Celtics majority owner Wyc Grousbeck.
With that said, it’s a cool tradition and a great photo opportunity for the players and their families. Regardless of your personal politics, spending any length of time at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is pretty damn cool.
After the ceremony, Celtics vice president of basketball operations Mike Zarren had an impromptu media availability with a small group of press on the South Lawn.
Zarren has been with the organization since 2005, and was in attendance during the team’s last visit to the White House back in 2008.
After talking about some of the causes his organization wanted to highlight with the Biden administration during their visit, as well as reminiscing about the team’s visit with President George W. Bush 16 years ago, Zarren closed out the media availability with an awesome story from his time in the Oval Office on Thursday.
“So it’s funny,” said Zarren. “I was talking to a Secret Service agent from Massachusetts inside, and he was apparently here for the Warriors two years ago. And he told them it was a bittersweet moment because he wished his Celtics were here.
“And they said to him, ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be here soon.’ So for him, it was a good moment to see us show up inside there.”
As we all painfully remember, the 2022 Warriors defeated the Celtics in the NBA Finals, punching their ticket to visit Biden in D.C. later that year.
At the time, it was the latest and most gut-wrenching example of this Boston core always being close-but-no-cigar. And it would take one more heart-breaking playoff upset the following year before the Celtics would develop the championship mettle necessary to go all the way.
But in June of 2022, it was clear to the NBA’s most recent dynasty that the team that handed them their fourth title in eight years was going to reach the top of the mountain soon enough.
Two years later, they were right.
The 2024-25 Celtics (12-3) continue their title defense on Friday with an NBA Cup game against the Washington Wizards (2-11).