Shane Battier was a First Team All-American, an ACC Player of the Year, and the Most Outstanding Player on a national championship-winning team at Duke. He played 13 years in the NBA, winning rings in two of his final three seasons as a member of the Heatles-era Miami Heat. However, nothing compared to being invited to play basketball with Barack Obama at his 49th birthday party.
Advertisement
The year was 2010, and Obama was not even halfway through his first term as president. Battier was a member of the Houston Rockets at the time when he got a call he didn’t expect.
The former defensive stopper and all-time glue guy shared this surreal story on Pablo Torre Finds Out. The details are so incredibly specific that they’d be impossible to make up.
“Call out of the blue, ‘Hey, what are you doing this day? The president has requested you to play in his birthday pickup game,'” Battier recalled.
The game was loaded with some of the best players past and present from Magic Johnson to Carmelo Anthony and from Alonzo Mourning to LeBron James and Dwyane Wade.
Hearing this, Pablo Torre remarked, “The stuff a kid would do who loved basketball and had the power to invite everybody.” And he’s absolutely right. Well, what would you do if you were the leader of the free world? Answer: Invite LeBron to your basketball birthday party.
Battier then described what it was like getting to the gym for the party. “The defensive driving, like Navy SEALs who drove us to the gym, that was bada**. That was the coolest part, those guys were bobbing and weaving.”
Marilyn Monroe may have famously sung Happy Birthday to President John F. Kennedy way back in the day, but for my money, no President had a better birthday than Obama.
Battier said that he was on POTUS’s team, and after they lost the first two games, he got to hear a unique motivational speech: “President Obama says, ‘Guys, bring it in. As your commander-in-chief, I command you to not lose this last game.’ When your president gives you an order, you listen,” Battier recalled.
When your president gives you an order, you listen. Battier and his team did win that final game, ending it when Obama himself hit the winning shot and held his hand in the air to celebrate.
Lest anyone think this group of NBA legends allowed the birthday boy to win and have his moment in the sun, Battier said, “There were no hard fouls, but they were blocking his shot. I think the president appreciated that. He didn’t want charity.”
To this day, Battier says that he has no idea why he was invited to the game alongside guys like Magic and LeBron. But Obama had his reasons.
First, Obama was and is a real sports fan, and he wanted people to know it. Anybody could have used their power to invite some of the most famous players of all time. But by inviting Battier, Obama was flexing that the president knows ball.
Second, legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was the coach of Team USA at that time. Obama began the tradition of making his NCAA Tournament picks when he took office one year earlier, in 2009, and he nailed his first bracket when he selected Duke’s arch-rival, the North Carolina Tar Heels, to win it all. Picking an all-time Blue Devil like Battier was a way to thank Coach K and show he wasn’t picking sides in college basketball’s best rivalry.
“It was an unbelievable day,” Battier recalled. “But the coolest part was we’re on the South Lawn having a birthday barbecue afterwards, and they’ve got some hip-hop playing.
“And all of a sudden, ‘Pony’ by Ginuwine comes on. And I’m just thinking to myself, ‘Our forefathers are rolling in their graves right now that Ginuwine’s ‘Pony’ is playing on the South Lawn.'”
I don’t know, sounds like a pretty epic way to end an unbelievable day. Hail to the Chief indeed.
