Does a photo show demolition done to the White House by Barack Obama to install an indoor basketball court? No, that's not true: A black and white photo shows the West Wing expansion project conducted by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1934. Obama did install a basketball court in 2009, 75 years after the photo was taken, but it did not require demolition of White House buildings. He added basketball hoops and court markings to an existing outdoor tennis court on the South Lawn of the White House; preserving the potential for the court to be used for either sport.
The claim appears in a post (archived here) published on Facebook on Oct. 22, 2025. It was captioned:
This is an absolute horrible tragedy to the white house. Literally tearing down a section to-- Oh, my bad this picture is when Obama wrecked the wh to put up an indoor basketball court.
Using TAX PAYER MONEY!
My president builds a ballroom to host world leaders.
Your president built a basketball court to host Diddy and LeBron.
We are not the same...
~Joe Pags
This is the image included in the Facebook post:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from facebook.com/share/p/1BNYzzwAv8.)
This old photo has not been widely published on the internet, one example (pictured below) is from the now defunct website whitehousemuseum.org. The image search engine TinEye catalogued the photo in on Sept. 21, 2012 and Lead Stories was able to locate the webpage (archived here) on the Internet Archive. The image is captioned:
The West Wing being demolished for renovation 1934
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from web.archive.org/web/20120127111443mp_/http://whitehousemuseum.org/west-wing.htm.)
An archived page on obamawhitehouse.archives.gov tells the story of the basketball court but with no images:
Shortly after taking office, President Obama had the White House tennis court adapted so it could be used for both tennis and basketball. The White House has had a smaller outdoor court since 1991, but the adapted tennis court allows enough room for a full court game of basketball. The new court has played host to a number of distinguished visitors, from college basketball championship teams to Wounded Warrior players.
Footage from the Wounded Warriors visit to the White House basketball court was posted on YouTube by The Obama White House on Nov. 9, 2009 (embedded below).
There is no public record of Obama playing basketball with Sean Combs. In 2011, celebrating his 50th birthday, Obama did play basketball with LeBron James as noted in a April 4, 2020 Sports Illustrated article:
The most famous example of people playing with Obama was on his 50th birthday. Reggie and Obama's friends put together a game with just every NBA player you could imagine to come play. In that game was LeBron James, Chris Paul, Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Shane Battier, Alonzo Mourning and Magic Johnson came out of retirement for it. Maya Moore played in the game. Kobe Bryant came but he was injured at the time.
According to a press pool report published in the LA Times on April 26, 2008, while visiting the Basketball Hall of Fame in New Castle, IN, then-Democratic presidential primary candidate Obama said:
I have sworn that we're taking out the bowling alley in the White House and we're putting in a basketball court.
But he never did that. On Aug. 31, 2011 ABC News reported:
Sept. 1, 2011 -- As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to tear out the White House bowling alley and install a basketball court if elected. Now, nearly four years later, the basement bowling alley is still there, and getting plenty of use.
More than 4,100 have been granted access to the White House to visit the presidential lanes in the Executive Office Building since Obama took office, according to visitor logs released by the administration and analyzed by ABC News.
Other fact checks
This claim was also investigated by Snopes.
