The woman who turned every news story into a slavery comparison just found her next target – a basketball owner who accepted a White House invitation.
MSNBC fired her for it and America moved on.
Now she's back with the same playbook, and this time she aimed it at James Dolan.
The Comment That Proves Exactly Why She Got Fired
Joy Reid sat down on her The Joy Reid Show podcast this week and did what she always does – turned a championship celebration into a race lecture.
Dolan "definitely comes across as a plantation owner character," Reid said, calling the White House visit "demeaning" to the Black players who might attend.
Her guest, Atlantic writer Jemele Hill, went further.
Accepting the invite seemed "very slave-y," Hill said.
These are the same talking points Reid spent years pushing on MSNBC – right up until the moment her bosses pulled the plug on her show in February 2025 because almost nobody was watching.
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Her ratings had collapsed 28% in a single year – down to roughly 973,000 viewers – and MSNBC finally did what viewers had been doing for years.
They left.
The NBA's White House History Reid Conveniently Ignores
There is actual history here, and Reid either doesn't know it or doesn't care.
Since 2017, NBA champions have refused White House visits as a form of political protest against Trump.
The Golden State Warriors started it that year when Stephen Curry made clear he wasn't going – and Trump pulled their invitation before they could say no themselves.
It became a pattern.
The Toronto Raptors skipped it in 2019.
The Oklahoma City Thunder – last year's champions – also declined.
Three teams visited during Biden's presidency: the Milwaukee Bucks, the Warriors again, and the Boston Celtics.
The Knicks are set to break that nine-year boycott – and the reason is simple: Dolan is a decades-long personal friend of the president who invited Trump to sit in his box for Game 3 of the Finals.
That's not a plantation story.
That's a friend accepting an invitation from another friend who happens to be president.
What This Is Actually About
Reid's entire career was built on one move: find a normal thing and call it slavery.
She invoked the Fugitive Slave Act when Texas Democrats fled the state to deny a quorum in 2021.
She linked Alabama's birth rate to plantation economics in 2024.
She compared Thanksgiving to colonization and slavery in 2022.
Every story, every issue, every political dispute – the lens never changed.
The Knicks players aren't slaves.
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Jalen Brunson is one of the highest-paid point guards in the NBA.
Karl-Anthony Towns just won his first championship.
These are grown men making their own decisions – several have already declined to confirm whether they'll attend, which is precisely the individual choice Reid claims she wants them to have.
Whoopi Goldberg – not exactly a Trump supporter – said it best when she broke with her The View co-hosts and defended the visit: "I want all those black men to stand in our house."
Our house.
The White House belongs to all Americans – including NBA champions from New York.
The Real Story Nobody Is Saying
The Knicks just won their first championship since 1973 – closing out the San Antonio Spurs in five games.
Their city went crazy.
Trump attended Game 3, got booed, watched the only Knicks loss of the series, and then publicly praised Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby, and Mitchell Robinson after they clinched the title.
Joy Reid looked at all of that and saw slavery.
Now she's on a podcast instead of cable television, still running the same play, still finding plantation imagery in places it doesn't exist.
That tells you everything you need to know.
Sources:
- Taylor Herzlich, "Joy Reid calls Knicks boss James Dolan a 'plantation owner' for accepting Trump's WH invite," New York Post, June 24, 2026.
- "Knicks Set to Be First NBA Team to Visit White House Under Trump," NBC News, June 2026.
- "Joy Reid and Piers Morgan Clash Over Race After MSNBC Firing," Fox News, July 18, 2025.
- "MSNBC Silent as Joy Reid Continues Pattern of Controversial and Bizarre Remarks," Fox News, April 2022.