Jared Dudley says he’d ‘love’ for Lakers to visit Joe Biden at the White House

Despite the best efforts of current president Donald Trump to deny it, Joe Biden has been elected as the 46th president of the United States. And while this is far from the most significant side-effect of that reality, there is at least one way this directly affects the Lakers: They can go to the White House to celebrate their 2020 NBA Championship.

Sure, the Lakers theoretically could have gone either way, but no NBA team has visited the White House since the man LeBron James called a “bum” on Twitter was elected president, and there is a precisely zero percent chance that a James-led team was going to break that trend.

However, a recent tweet from James — who endorsed Biden prior to the election — suggested that he wouldn’t mind a visit now that his preferred candidate will be in office:

Trevor Lane of Lakers Nation asked NBA Champion Jared Dudley on a recent episode of his podcast if the team has talked about a potential White House visit yet, and it sounded like he’s interested (even if there isn’t a formal plan yet):

“It hasn’t been discussed yet internally when it comes to player-wise. I did see LeBron’s tweet about going back to the White House, but I think that it would symbolize a lot too. I would love to do it, you have a new president Joe Biden who just won the election, I think they can schedule that, I think Biden would love to have the Lakers there, it would be cool to be the first sports team to do that.”

But with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it might not be that easy to schedule such a big event, although Dudley is fairly confident the White House and NBA could pull it off safely:

“I think that this is the new norm. Us and the coronavirus, we have to get used to it. Us wearing masks or social distancing. The NBA, they’re the best at testing, so we’re gonna be corona free to be able to go into that White House. No one is going to have that (coronavirus). It’ll be all the right regulations, and I think it would be a good picture just to have.”

There would obviously be a lot more hoops to jump through to make this happen, but it’s notable — albeit expected — that there is at least some level of interest on the Lakers’ part in doing so. And in a year in which they (understandably) couldn’t have a parade, it would be a cool return to normalcy for the Lakers to get one of the usual rewards received by the NBA champs. We’ll see if they and Biden’s team can work it out down the line.

For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen.