After the New York Knicks won the NBA championship for the first time since 1973 in June 2026, a rumor spread online that the team had declined an invitation to celebrate their victory at the White House.
Several social media posts relayed the claim, including one X post that shared an image of the team holding up the trophy after their victory against the San Antonio Spurs on June 13 (
In addition, Snopes readers contacted us to investigate the story's veracity.
The claim was satirical. As of this writing, the White House had not invited the Knicks, so the team could not have declined.
"This is fake news," a White House official told Snopes via email. "The White House congratulates the Knicks on their championship win and looks forward to discussing a visit in the near future."
Snopes also reached out to the Knicks to ask if they would visit the White House should they be invited. We will update this story if we hear back.
Post comes from satirical Facebook page
To investigate the rumor's legitimacy, we first used search engines DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo. If the Knicks had really declined to attend a White House event in their honor, journalists with reputable news outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters, would have widely reported on it, and those searches would have uncovered this evidence. That was not the case.
Instead, the rumor originated with a satirical Facebook page's post the day after the Knicks' win. While the Box Score PH page's bio describes its content as "satire" and "parody," it did not label this post as satirical, which may have led readers to believe it was real:
JUST IN: No DC trip for the champs. The New York Knicks are skipping the traditional White House visit after bringing the Larry O'Brien trophy back to the Mecca. Rumor has it the squad is blaming President Donald Trump for ruining their perfect series run when he attended Game 3—the Knicks' only loss.
The Knicks' only Finals loss indeed came in Game 3 on June 8, which Trump attended.
We contacted Box Score PH for its response to some people mistaking the satirical story for real news and await a reply.
Since satire is subjective, we use "originated as satire" or "labeled satire" ratings based on creators' description of their work. It's your call whether you agree.
For further reading, Snopes has debunked other satirical rumors involving the NBA and the WNBA. For example, in November 2025, we alerted readers to a satirical claim that WNBA star Brittney Griner had been arrested in Brussels with contraband.