The President, Game 7, and a Kiss Cam
Did you know? Jimmy Carter played basketball, helicoptered to a decisive NBA playoff game, and stole a Valentine's Day smooch
On Presidents Day, as former President Jimmy Carter marks a full year in hospice care, let's take a trip into a somewhat hidden side of his long and multifaceted life — his connections to basketball and his love for the game.
Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, is known for his love for running, fishing, and baseball.1 But Carter, now 99 years old, has also had plenty of brushes with basketball, a sport born less than 33 years before he was.
Here’s a quick jaunt through the ways this peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia — often hailed as the greatest ex-president — has found his life touched by basketball: as a high school forward, the most powerful person in the world, and a playful participant on an NBA kiss cam.
Early Days in Georgia
In 1978, Sports Illustrated wrote up the president’s past athletic exploits a couple of times — Carter had been inaugurated the year before — focusing on his career as a cross-country runner at the Naval Academy.2
One article noted that while Carter’s tiny high school in Plains — “a basketball town” — didn’t have a track or cross-country team, the future president and teammate Billy Wise would practice basketball on an outdoor dirt court and then run 2½ miles home.3
From Sports Illustrated:
The President and the Champs
In 1978, the Washington Bullets did something almost unprecedented for NBA champions4 — they visited the White House.5
The Bullets also set a speed record that might never be broken, flying home from Seattle and showing up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue less than 48 hours after defeating the SuperSonics in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
Game 7
On April 29, 1979, Carter traveled via Marine One — the presidential helicopter — and his motorcade to the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals between his hometown teams: Atlanta and Washington.
The Bullets beat the Hawks 100-94 on their way to an NBA Finals rematch, which they lost in five games to the Seattle SuperSonics.6
The Carters and the Globetrotters
Jimmy the Sports Fan
Carter has been seen frequently at Atlanta Braves games, as here with Atlanta Hawks All-Star-to-be Joe Johnson in 2006.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter attended a number of Hawks games together. In this Feb. 14, 2019, photo from the team’s social media account, Hawks owner Tony Ressler presented a personalized jersey to the 39th president.7
Jimmy and Rosalynn also made a cameo on the kiss cam — as you can see below — and not for the first time.
Here is their Valentine’s Day 2019 smooch at the Hawks game, as they celebrated what would ultimately be a 77-year marriage — they were married in 1946, and Rosalynn died in 2023 — making them the longest-married couple in presidential history.
As president, Carter was known as an avid runner (who as president famously fainted — or nearly collapsed, at least — while on a six-mile run), an outdoorsman (who famously encountered a swamp rabbit — or “killer rabbit” — while fishing), and a big fan of the Atlanta Braves, including a friendship with home run champ Hank Aaron.
In 2008, Dallas Observer ranked Carter as the seventh-most athletic president, although some other such lists have left him mentioned not at all or only in passing.
One reason for practicing outside might have been that the Plains High School gym had burned down.
According to Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter: The Georgia Years, 1924-1974, by E. Stanly Godbold, Jr., some blamed Jimmy for the 1940 demise of the school gym and vocational building, home to the Plains High School Buffaloes since its construction just six years earlier:
After the wooden gymnasium burned, Jimmy and his basketball teammates had to play in the nearby town of Preston. Since Jimmy and Billy Wise were the last boys to use a forge in the shop that was housed in the gym, town gossip accused them of having caused the fire. Jimmy always denied it.
On Jan. 31, 1963, the Boston Celtics, who had defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in a Game 7 nine months earlier to win their fourth-consecutive NBA title, “swung by the White House” — without Bill Russell, who either opted out or overslept — while in the vicinity for a game to meet with President John F. Kennedy, a native of the Boston area. (Photos from the JFK Library here.) It would be the only such recorded visit to the White House by an NBA championship team until the Bullets’ appearance in 1978.
On Feb. 22, 1980, Carter would also be the first president to host the NFL champions when he invited the Pittsburgh Steelers to the White House a month after their fourth Super Bowl victory in six seasons, although they had to share the stage with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the 1979 World Series champions — whose visit was predated by baseball champions from as early as 1865 (explained here), shortly after the Civil War, with Andrew Johnson having succeeded Abraham Lincoln as president.
John Papanek, who much later would be my boss at ESPN, featured the White House visit in a colorful Sports Illustrated story on the Bullets you can find here.
Since that 1978-79 season, the Washington franchise — renamed the Wizards in 1997 by owner Abe Pollin — has yet to win 50 games in a season or make it back to the Eastern Conference finals.
This was hardly Carter’s first time to cross paths with a Hawks owner. In addition to his many friendly interactions with media mogul (and America’s Cup champion) Ted Turner — who owned the Braves and Hawks — one must also note this less savory encounter with a political opponent.
Carl Sanders, then a Hawks co-owner, said Carter “hoodwinked” voters with his 1970 Georgia gubernatorial primary campaign by running “a segregated race” — including the use of this photo of Sanders with Hawks star Lou Hudson, which reinforced some voters’ concerns that Sanders was, for their tastes, too racially moderate, too urbane and wealthy, and too worldly.
According to observers of the Georgia political scene, Carter came to regret his actions in the campaign. In his 1971 inaugural address after defeating Sanders and winning the governorship, Carter declared to his fellow Georgians, “I say to you frankly, the time for racial discrimination is over. No poor, rural, weak or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job, or simple justice.”
Eventually Carter won the strong support of various Black leaders, as covered in this 2023 New York Times story, and his successful 1976 campaign for the presidency relied heavily on African American voters, who favored Carter to then-President Gerald Ford, 83% to 17%.
As governor, president, and ex-president, Carter became known as a powerful advocate for civil rights and human rights.
love this.
Jimmy Carter was a helluva president and a great man. And probably the best ex-president ever - his work with Habitat for Humanity is awesome!