Stephen Curry deserved more from the NBA

President Donald Trump announced Saturday morning on Twitter that Stephen Curry had been disinvited from the White House over criticisms the two-time NBA MVP had levied a day prior. This sparked a day of reaction from various corners of the basketball world.

Meanwhile, the president’s harsh criticisms of NFL players protesting police brutality and racial inequality — including calls for them to be suspended or fired — set up a large-scale Black Athletes vs. Trump narrative for the weekend.

What’s most notable about the vast NBA reaction to the president’s attack on Curry is whose statements were blunt, direct, and effective.

It’s not the statements coming on official letterhead from the commissioner, the Warriors, or even the players’ union. Those have been soft and a little tortured.

This has been especially pronounced because the statements from players themselves have been so forceful and unyielding.

Start with The King.

A few hours later, LeBron expanded on this thoughts about the perils of the president using sports as a platform to divide Americans.

“I think it’s basically at a point where I’m kind of, just a little frustrated, man. This guy who we’ve put in charge has tried to divide us right again. Obviously, we all know what happened with Charlottesville and the divide that caused. Now, it’s even hitting home for me more because he’s now using sports as the platform to try to divide us.

We all know how much sports brings us together, how much passion it has, how much we love and care, the friendships and everything it creates. For him to use this platform to divide us even more is not something I can stand for and is not something I can be quiet about.

You look at him asking the NFL owners to get their players off the field because they’re exercising their rights. That’s not right.

And then, when I wake up, I see that a colleague of mine has been uninvited from something that he didn’t even want to go to in the first place, to the White House. That’s just something I can’t stand for, man.

We got Jemele Hill, Colin Kaepernick, all these people are speaking up, and it’s for the greater cause. It’s for us to all come together. It’s not about a division. It’s not about dividing. We, as the American people, need to come together even more stronger, man.

Because this is a very critical time, and me being in the position that I am, I had to voice this to y’all.

That opened the floodgates as Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant, David West, and Robin Lopez — clever as ever — jumped into the fray.

Is this how it’s going to be? No one expects a franchise owner to call the sitting president a “bum.” No one expects Adam Silver to joke about impeachment. And certainly coaches Steve Kerr, Gregg Popovich, and Stan Van Gundy have been among the most forceful, cogent critics of the president in all of sports.

But this is an inflection point. This is a critical moment. And this is what we’re getting?

“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.”

The sitting president attacked the face of your franchise for having the temerity to oppose racism, support protest, and decline an invitation for a ceremonial photo op. And this is the response?

The defense of the right of expression is nice, as is the specific mention of the president’s name. (Most NFL teams who issued statements left even that out.)

Yet this statement does not accurately reflect what happened: The players were opposed to a visit for obvious reasons related to racism and white supremacy emanating from the White House, management wanted a chance to change the players’ minds in the spirit of “open dialogue” with the president, and the president put the kibosh on the whole thing because he didn’t want to have an open dialogue about having an open dialogue. Kerr, Joe Lacob, Bob Myers — they thought the Warriors could use this visit to have a discourse with the president. The players knew what a lie that was.

Nor did the Warriors take the opportunity to trumpet exactly what community and charity work their players do on a regular basis already. Such as Curry’s work with the U.N. Foundation’s bed-net program to fight malaria in refugee camps. Or Draymond Green’s involvement with RISE. Or Kevin Durant’s effort to build community basketball courts all over the country. Or even the franchise’s annual trips to San Quentin. Those examples would have shed necessary light on ways the players actually “celebrate equality, diversity, and inclusion.”

Kerr did speak with candor and strength later on Saturday. It’s a shame none of that made it into the Warriors’ official statement.

Silver, who expertly handled the Donald Sterling debacle in his earliest days in charge of the NBA, might as well have sat out on Saturday. His three sentences do three things:

Nowhere does Silver defend one of the faces of the league from attack by the president of the United States. Nowhere does Silver point out that the president is responsible for the visit not happening at all. Nowhere does Silver explicitly commend the Warriors’ players for acting with grace the president is unable to conjure.

More importantly, nowhere does Silver even acknowledge the specific objections the NBA community has raised in response to Trump’s policies and rhetoric. Nowhere does Silver acknowledge Trump’s long, racist campaign to delegitimize the nation’s first black president; or Trump’s revanchist, racist politics; or Trump expressing more empathy for neo-Nazis wielding torches and firearms than black athletes kneeling silently.

Stephen Curry was attacked by the sitting president of the United States, and neither his franchise nor his league fully defended him. So it is left to LeBron.

Thankfully, he’s up to the task. But he can’t do it alone.

It’s time for the league’s other power structure — Silver and the 30 franchise owners -- to step up and join the fight.