Baller-in-Chief

(From Liz Robbins for the New York Times Online)

Win a championship or win a medal, get feted and go to the White House. That’s the usual path for a sports team in this country.

It is far more unusual for a team with a losing record to visit the President of the United States. But President Barack Obama is a self-proclaimed “die-hard” Chicago Bulls fan and an avid hoops player, who has, on occasion played pickup games in Chicago with N.B.A. players.

So today, on one of the more significant days yet of his administration, when President Obama rolled out his $3.55 trillion spending plan in the morning, he did not play hoops. But he did entertain the 26-36 Bulls, a team that knows a thing or two about a deficit.

The Bulls flew into town to prepare for their game on Friday against the Washington Wizards, the worst team in the Eastern Conference. Thirty-six players, staff and front office executives attended a meet and greet in the Blue Room of the White House just before 5 p.m. on Thursday. David Axelrod, a senior advisor to Mr. Obama, and another longtime Bulls fan, also attended the event.

Mr. Obama, of course, rose to political prominence in Chicago while the Michael Jordan-led Bulls were winning six N.B.A. championships.

(The meeting came at an unfortunately sad time for the franchise, however. Norm Van Lier, the Bulls popular guard for 10 seasons who later became a team television analyst, was found dead in his apartment in Chicago. He was 61, and the cause of death had not yet been released pending an investigation.)

According to a White House spokesman, the President congratulated the team for working hard and making progress this season. (They finished 33-49 last season, and scored point guard Derrick Rose with the No.1 draft pick.) The players and coaches presented Mr. Obama with a Chicago Bulls jersey that said “Obama,” and had the number 44.

The President told the players that there was a tennis court with basketball hoops out back, and invited them to come for a pickup game sometime this summer.

In a light moment during the group picture, Mr. Obama requested standing next to guard Ben Gordon because, at 6-foot-3, “Ben’s not that tall.” That drew laughter.

Before the visit, Steve Schanwald, Executive Vice President of Business Operations for the team stated: “The opportunity to visit President Obama at the White House is a great honor for the Chicago Bulls organization. The President has been a fan of the Bulls for many years and we are very appreciative of this opportunity to say hello to him and pay our respects.”

The history of sports teams and American presidents paying their mutual respect at the White House is at least as old as Theodore Roosevelt’s administration. In 1902, President Roosevelt hosted the Carlisle Indian School Team, after it had defeated Georgetown University the previous day.

One day in 1904, President Roosevelt kept senators waiting in the Cabinet room while he shook hands with the Harvard baseball team and exhorted them to win “every game from here to the end of the season.”

President George W. Bush, a former managing partner of the Texas Rangers, enjoyed entertaining winning teams and sports figures, as documented in an article in the Los Angeles Times: .

In 2007, according to White House figures, more than 1,000 college athletes, coaches and officials took part. The effort to reach out to winners became so much a part of the White House routine that a staffer was assigned to track the range of NCAA and professional championships and then arrange visits from the winners.

This is, however, not the first time a team visited the White House with a losing record, let alone an N.B.A. team. It took the Miami Heat eight months after winning its franchise’s first championship in June of 2006 to get a date with President Bush.

The Heat, too, visited the day before playing the Wizards. But at the time (Feb. 28, 2007), Miami was suffering through injuries to Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O’Neal and the team was below .500 at 27-29.

The visit was memorable for a fumbled exchange between President Bush and Shaquille O’Neal, then the team’s towering superstar center. President Bush, according to the account in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, attempted a bounce pass to O’Neal with his newly autographed team ball. But the ball was not properly inflated and fell flat on the floor. Mr. O’Neal smiled.

Maybe it was an omen. That year the Heat went on to lose in the first round of the playoffs, swept, in fact, by the Bulls. Neither team made the playoffs in 2008.