After President Donald Trump tweeted that the NBA champion Golden State Warriors wouldn't be invited to the White House this year, the team has responded with an official statement of their own.
Here is the Warriors' statement:
While we intended to meet as a team at the first opportunity we had this morning to collaboratively discuss a potential visit to the White House, we accept that President Trump has made it clear that we are not invited. We believe there is nothing more American than our citizens having the right to express themselves freely on matters important to them. We're disappointed that we did not have an opportunity during this process to share our views or have open dialogue on issues impacting our communities that we felt would be important to raise.
In lieu of a visit to the White House, we have decided that we'll constructively use our trip to the nation's capital in February to celebrate equality, diversity and inclusion - the values that we embrace as an organization.
An official invitation from the Trump administration was never actually tendered in the first place, according to ESPN's Ramona Shelburne.
While Trump indicated it was hesitation shown by guard Stephen Curry which led to the withdrawn invitation, both Curry and Kevin Durant have been fairly adamant that they wouldn't be participating in a White House visit if invited.
