For years, the championship-winning teams in the WNBA have always received an invitation to visit the White House to meet the sitting president. However, a senior journalist has confirmed that the latest champions have not received that invitation. Concerningly, it has been part of a broader trend as more and more are either not receiving invitations ot declining the ones they receive.
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Speaking on Friday’s episode of the No Offseason Basketball podcast, which WNBA analysts Sabreena Merchant and Anna Costabile co-host, Costabile offered a brief overview of how White House visits have unfolded throughout league history, beginning with the very first one in 2000 and leading up to the current situation.
“This year, a team spokesperson confirmed to me that yes, the Aces have not received an invite from the Donald Trump administration,” Costabile said.
She also pointed out that the Aces have not made it clear whether they would have attended had they received an invitation.
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“The first team to visit the White House, the Houston Comets, didn’t make that visit until 2000,” Costabile explained. What followed, according to her, were “relatively regular trips made to the White House in the years that followed, all up and through President Barack Obama’s two terms as president.”
However, she pointed out that things began to change once Donald Trump entered office. “When Donald Trump took office in 2017, his first term, we saw kind of a shift that occurred in terms of both invites extended and also teams’ interest in going,” she said.
As Costabile explained, the Minnesota Lynx, who won the championship in 2017, did not visit the White House. The same was true for the Seattle Storm and the Washington Mystics, who won titles in the years that followed. While the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the Mystics from making a White House visit, neither the Lynx nor the Storm received invitations. Costabile also noted that Sue Bird later confirmed the Storm had little interest in making the trip anyway.
That trend briefly changed after President Joe Biden took office. A’ja Wilson and the Las Vegas Aces visited the White House following their championship seasons in 2022 and 2023. However, the pattern shifted again afterward. As Costabile noted, when the New York Liberty won the title in 2024, they did not visit Trump’s White House in 2025. Now, the Aces have yet to receive an invitation. And there appears to be little indication that the team would have been eager to attend in the first place.
Costabile appeared to link the decline, at least in part, to broader ideological differences between the administration in power and the WNBA community. As she put it, the WNBA is “a league built on Black women, Black queer women.” This naturally raises the question of whether a particular White House is “one you’d want to visit.”
For now, it’s still not clear whether there will eventually be an invitation for the Aces. Until that happens, maybe the conversation surrounding White House visits in the WNBA is likely to continue. Particularly as questions persist about both the willingness of teams to attend and the willingness of administrations to invite them.
WNBA Analyst Presses White House on Aces, Future NBA Title Winners
Further speaking on Friday’s episode of the No Offseason Basketball podcast, WNBA analyst Anna Costabile confirmed that she had reached out to the White House in a professional capacity.
However, as things currently stand, she is still waiting for an answer. “I did reach out professionally speaking to the White House to ask if an invite would be extended,” Costabile said. She then revealed that the inquiry has so far gone unanswered. “Did not get an immediate response. Have not gotten a response to those questions.”
The situation with the Donald Trump administration, however, is not an issue involving only women’s basketball. As Costabile pointed out, no NBA team has visited Trump’s White House either. That prompted her to broaden her inquiry beyond the WNBA.
“No NBA team has visited Trump’s White House either,” she noted, explaining that she also sought clarification on that situation.
But specifically, the question right now is whether the White House plans to extend an invitation this year. “And so would Trump extend an invite to the Knicks or Spurs, whoever wins the NBA Finals,” Costabile said. Trump, however, attended Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the Knicks and Spurs at Madison Square Garden. Perhaps that could be an indication that whichever team ultimately wins the championship would receive an invitation.
