NEW YORK — In 1999, Donald Trump watched from courtside as the Knicks lost the NBA Finals to the San Antonio Spurs in five games. He had seats. He had opinions. The Knicks, as they always seemed to do, broke his heart.
Twenty-seven years later, the same teams are back in the Finals, Madison Square Garden is hosting its first championship game since that series, and Trump — now President of the United States — is heading back to his arena.
Trump confirmed Thursday that he will attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Monday at MSG after accepting an invitation from Knicks owner James Dolan. Asked directly whether he planned to go, Trump left little ambiguity. “The answer is yes,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “He’s invited me, and I’m going. I’ll be there. It could be Monday. Maybe I’ll do both” — a reference to the possibility of returning for Game 4 on Wednesday, though his plans for that game remain unconfirmed.
The NBA believes it would make Trump the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game, a distinction that carries its own particular weight given how turbulent his relationship with the league has been. During his first term, Trump routinely attacked NBA players who knelt during the national anthem, publicly feuded with LeBron James, and declared in a 2020 post that “people are tired of watching the highly political @NBA.” The league’s ratings, he predicted, would never recover.
Commissioner Adam Silver, speaking Thursday at an NBA Cares community event in San Antonio, welcomed the visit. Silver told reporters Trump was “very much a New Yorker” and recalled attending Knicks games alongside him long before Trump entered politics. “He was a big Knicks fan,” Silver said, noting Trump appeared in an “I Love This Game” NBA promotional spot and attended multiple drafts when they were held at the Garden. “I’m thrilled another New Yorker wants to participate in the enthusiasm and the joy around this Knicks team.”
As ESPN reported, Silver framed the appearance in the language he has used throughout a bruising few years in the sport’s relationship with American politics — that basketball can be a place where what people share matters more than what divides them. “Sports, in particular, is something where we can emphasize what we have in common, not what pulls us apart,” he said. “It creates a sense of belonging.”
Whether MSG’s crowd — still among the most notoriously unsparing fan bases in professional sports — will agree is a question nobody can answer yet.
Trump, a Queens native, gave the Knicks his full endorsement from the Oval Office. He said he caught the end of their 105-95 Game 1 victory in San Antonio on Wednesday — a game he said he missed in the middle, characteristically noting the reason. “I missed the middle because I talk to generals all night long now,” he said, “but I watched that end of the game and they were dominant. Really amazing.” He praised Spurs star Victor Wembanyama with the unqualified enthusiasm he typically reserves for people he likes: “He’s a great player. He’s going to be a great player. He is already a great player.”
Dolan, who has donated to Trump’s political campaigns, invited the president to a Knicks playoff game earlier in the postseason. Trump had intended to attend Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals, but the Knicks swept the Cleveland Cavaliers in four games, forcing a schedule change. “I was going to go on Wednesday, but they closed it out very quickly,” Trump said last week.
The security footprint for a presidential visit to Madison Square Garden — a dense 20,000-seat arena sitting above Penn Station in the heart of Midtown Manhattan — presents a logistical challenge unlike most venues. Federal law enforcement officials, as CBS News reported, are implementing a detailed security plan; other attendees may be required to arrive up to two hours before tip-off. Law enforcement has been conducting walkthroughs of the arena in preparation.
Trump will not be alone in the building with political significance. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a progressive who ran on a platform sharply at odds with Trump’s, confirmed he has purchased a ticket to Game 3 as well — though a spokesperson made clear he would not be sitting near the president. “I will be at Game 3. I will be in a very different section of the stadium,” Mamdani said, “and we look forward to welcoming any New Yorker who is excited for the Knicks to win that championship.”
The Knicks are playing in the Finals for the first time since 1999, carrying the weight of a fan base that has waited 53 years for a championship. They hold a 1-0 lead heading into Friday’s Game 2 in San Antonio. Whether Trump returns for Game 4 on Wednesday will likely depend on one thing the White House cannot schedule: whether New York can hold its lead.
