POTUS Embarrassingly Brags About Joe Biden’s Granddaughter Maisy to Her Basketball Idols

Parents and grandparents usually embellish the achievements of their children or grandchildren in a misguided effort to reassure themselves that they’ve done an okay job making sure that the next generation can competently manage, or at least participate in, the world. Glowing praise, however, can make kids uncomfortable because nobody really likes to be talked about if or as if they’re not present. Take Maisy Biden, for instance, whose grandfather’s effusive and embarrassingly genial friend bragged to the entire U.S. Women’s Olympic basketball team about how good a basketball player Maisy is, an episode that, when she heard about it, probably made Maisy want to melt into an Alex Mack puddle an slither somberly away.

When President Obama and Not-Quite-President Biden met with the U.S. Women’s team before it departed for London, Potus took the opportunity to talk up Maisy’s crossover, her layup, her bounce pass and her pick and roll (this is how basketball enthusiasts speak to one another). He even went so far as to proclaim to the team that Maisy was so good at playing hot potato with a spherical object within a bounded rectangular wooden space, that she would one day be listening politely to another president talk about how good another vice president’s granddaughter is at basketball. Said the Prez,

I am making this prediction right now: Joe Biden’s granddaughter, who is named Maisy – Maisy Biden – will be a division one player and maybe in the WNBA. She is an athlete – a really good one, [she’s] got handles. Here’s how you know she’s a baller: I was doing some coaching on the team, so we did a little practice on Sunday. And I said, you know what, everybody’s got to work on their left hand or their weak hand.

Ha ha, Mr. President — you’re an adorable father figure who knows just how to steer a young person towards Olympic glory. Though Maisy is only eleven right now, the President has her making the Olympic team of the future (barring an asteroid impact or the eruption of the Yellowstone caldera). However, he called Maisy a “baller” right in front of the Olympic basketball team, which would be really humiliating for any ordinary kid, but is probably only medium-humiliating for Maisy because her grandpa seems like the kind of well-meaning sports fan who’d bring a giant foam hand to a grade-school basketball tournament.

Obama does some paternal bragging about Joe Biden’s ‘baller’ granddaughter [NYDN]