Not Even Trump Can Ruin the Knicks’ Moment

My beloved New York Knicks—the team of my youth, the team of my life—have won 13 straight playoff games and are up 2–0 in the best-of-seven NBA finals against the San Antonio Spurs. The most painful championship drought in sports could be ending after 53 years. As Pete Axthelm wrote in 1970, basketball is above all else “the city game,” and finally, at long last, the NBA title could be coming back to the city of Rucker Park, Earl “The Goat” Manigault, and Power Memorial High School. The trophy could be returned to the only city where, as Rick Telander reminded us in 1977, “heaven is a playground.”

No one can ruin this moment, though Donald Trump is certainly going to try. Trump has announced that he will be in attendance tonight at Madison Square Garden for Game 3. This means an unprecedented and incredibly expensive security operation just to get him to his box seats. The city is telling fans to get to the game two hours early, carry no bags, and expect TSA-style security at the doors. The raucous watch parties outside of MSG for fans who can’t afford the outrageous ticket prices—as of publication, the cheapest available tickets for Game 3 are $4,755—will be banned in the name of “security.” (We will see how easy that dictate will be to enforce.)

Trump’s presence casts a shadow because New Yorkers do not like this man. It’s like having Bull Connor show up to the NAACP Image Awards because he’s a fan of Misty Copeland. The depth of the city’s distaste for Trump can’t be fully captured in polling or the voting numbers in the last three presidential cycles. The disdain goes back to the 1980s, when Trump fomented racial violence around the case of the now-exonerated Central Park Five and tried to tear down and develop some of the most precious parts of the city. His return also recalls his 2024 Madison Square Garden hate rally, when, just days before the election, he brought out “comedians” who spewed racial invective, most infamously Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”

That event was widely compared to a 1939 Nazi rally held at MSG. Trump was allowed to hold that abomination on the hallowed grounds of “the World’s Most Famous Arena,” because of his longtime friendship with Knicks owner James Dolan. Like Trump, Dolan is an anti-worker nepo-baby who has been accused of sexual assault and being a racist, so their friendship is one of shared interests and hobbies. Trump also has been fulsomely welcomed by NBA commissioner Adam Silver. (Can we finally dispense with the fiction that Silver is some kind of crypto lefty?)

I can’t imagine the players will be thrilled that he’ll be there either. The president has consistently trashed NBA players over the years, because of their refusal to visit the White House and kiss his ring.

Trump is more of a fascist narcissist than a conservative ideologue and so he has a compulsion to place himself in the middle of the country’s biggest sports events. In 2025, he was the first president to attend the Super Bowl (where he was booed and the NFL’s anti-racist messaging was removed from the end zones, lest he take offense). Trump also regularly attends the hottest Ultimate Fighting Championship events and was at the Daytona 500, where friendly cheers massaged his ego. Then there was the 2019 World Series in Washington, DC, where he was met with raucous chants of “Lock him up!” His most recent trip to a sporting event in New York City was to last year’s Men’s US Open Finals, where even the normally polite crowd jeered him. But he is undeterred, with both his narcissism and keen political eye firmly set on glomming onto the New York Knicks.

In a bizarre way, it’s a credit to the Knicks’ run that Trump wants to attach himself to their playoff streak like a barnacle on a boat. The miraculous winning streak even provided a moment almost as rare as the Knicks journey to the precipice of a championship: I found myself agreeing with Stephen A. Smith on something. ESPN’s star talking head and scold of the political left is a die-hard Knicks fan, and he, surprisingly given his political proclivities, called upon Trump to change his Monday night plans and not attend. Even with the blood-red carpet laid out by Dolan and Silver, Smith said what the majority of New York City is thinking: that this is our moment and should not become another opportunity for Trump to feed his authoritarian personality disorder.

Yet, despite the two-hour waits at the door, the incredible inconvenience, and the presence of a white nationalist leader cheering on a team as diverse and international as the city itself, not even Donald Trump can spoil this—at least I dearly hope that is the case.

Knicks fans have been waiting decades for another title, and during these playoffs, this team has discovered a selfless way to play that is beautiful to behold. They are led improbably by Jalen Brunson, a six-foot point guard built like a fire hydrant who was a second-round draft pick. Brunson is already legendary for his late-game heroics, but he is also, alongside center Karl-Anthony Towns, playing in a style that recalls the 1973 Knicks champions led by Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, and Bill Bradley: They put the team above the individual, whipping the ball around until there’s an opening. No, not even Trump can ruin Game 3. The bandwagon has no room for this bigot. Trump will have to be content to stand in the shadows of his box seats, hiding from the boos, and watch a squad whose approach to basketball is antithetical to everything the avaricious, self-obsessed Trump represents.