NEW YORK — The camera found him during the national anthem, hand over his heart, standing between his granddaughter and the owner of the team he had come to cheer. What came back from the crowd was not what any of them likely expected in quite those proportions: a sustained wave of boos, described by the White House press pool as “loud and long,” rolling through Madison Square Garden before the opening tip of Game 3 of the NBA Finals.
Then the camera cut to Jalen Brunson warming up on the court below. The arena erupted in cheers.
That was the essential fact of Monday night in New York: Donald Trump became the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game, and the crowd’s instantaneous pivot from jeers to celebration when his guard appeared on the jumbotron said more about the city’s priorities than any political speech could. The San Antonio Spurs won 115-111, snapping a 13-game Knicks playoff winning streak. The series stands at two games to one in New York’s favor.
Trump arrived at the invitation of Knicks owner James Dolan — a long-time friend who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his presidential campaigns — and watched from a protected suite in the arena’s lower bowl, surrounded by members of his cabinet and shielded by bulletproof glass. Dolan, standing to Trump’s left when the jumbotron found them, appeared to the pool reporter to be smirking at the reaction from the seats below.
The president had seemed bullish about his welcome in the days before the game. Trump confirmed Thursday he would attend, saying of Knicks owner Dolan: “He’s a nice guy, OK? He spent a long time wanting to win and he’s got a team that’s amazing. I don’t think they’ve lost a playoff game.” He confirmed he would attend. “The answer is yes, he’s invited me and I’m going.”
What followed was a security operation that reshaped lower Manhattan for hours. The Secret Service, TSA, and the NYPD sealed a perimeter stretching from West 30th to West 35th Street between Sixth and Eighth Avenues. Seventh and Eighth Avenues closed to vehicle and general pedestrian traffic before 4 p.m. Fans with tickets queued through airport-style screening at five designated checkpoints, with waits stretching two hours or more. The outdoor watch party that had become a feature of Knicks playoff nights outside MSG — and which had drawn thousands during the team’s run through the Eastern Conference — was cancelled by the NYPD in coordination with the Secret Service. Mayor Zohran Mamdani scrambled to add Bryant Park as a free alternative, capped at 5,000 registered attendees.
Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox, perhaps the most direct voice in the league, was not tactful about the disruption. “I think the president being here just makes it inconvenient on everybody else,” he told reporters at the pregame shootaround. “We’ve got more, obviously more, security. We’ve got to send stuff early, our buses are a little earlier.” Getting into the building, he said, was “like getting screened by TSA.” The inconvenience, he added, was on “the people that’s got to play.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, asked earlier in the week to characterize Trump’s presence, had taken the diplomatic route, describing him as “just another New Yorker” coming to watch his team. On Monday night, Silver stood by the decision. “Yes, there’s some inconvenience to the fans, but looking around at the arena, it’s packed,” he said. “People listened, they came early, they got through the extra security, which is necessary. I think we should use sports to create more of a sense of community.”
The Knicks’ OG Anunoby had offered the more measured player perspective ahead of the game. “I think he’ll just be there watching,” Anunoby said. “We’re going to go as usual, play our game. Try to win the game.” They did not.
The Knicks had entered Game 3 with the second-longest unbeaten playoff streak in NBA history, a 2-0 series advantage, and the full force of a city that had waited 27 years to see its team in the Finals. None of those facts survived the night. The Spurs, who came to New York after dispatching the Oklahoma City Thunder in seven games in the Western Conference finals, held on behind a Stephon Castle performance in the fourth quarter to pull the game back from a Knicks run that had the crowd briefly believing in the comeback.
On the jumbotron, Trump had been flanked by Kai Trump and Dolan during the anthem. Footage circulated later in the evening appeared to show the 79-year-old president with his eyes closed in the suite during play — prompting the White House’s rapid response account to insist he was “just blinking.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who had already criticized Trump for disrupting the watch party outside the arena, reposted the clip with the question that crystallized the evening for much of New York: “So he ruined the night for all of those people just to take another nap?”
The politics of the evening were complicated by the geography of Trump’s history here. He was born in Queens. He built his brand in Manhattan. He held a rally at MSG in October 2024 that drew protests from fans who declared the arena “cursed” for hosting it. In the 2024 presidential election, CNBC reported Trump received fewer than 839,000 votes in New York City against more than 1.9 million for Kamala Harris. The crowd at MSG on Monday was, by ticket price alone, not a representative cross-section: some courtside seats had been auctioned by the Knicks for up to $1 million, ESPN reported. When asked about the ticket prices, Trump’s response was that “that’s the way life goes” and that the games were “semi-free to watch on television.”
The Knicks had won Games 1 and 2 in San Antonio, becoming only the third team in Finals history to win both road games to open a series. What they have not yet won is a championship since 1973, a gap of 53 years that the city has been carrying for longer than most of its residents have been alive. Knicks Hall of Famer Bill Bradley, who played on that 1973 team, offered a warning before Game 3. “It’s a free country,” Bradley said of Trump’s attendance, “but to me, he’s not going to be the center of attention.”
He was, for the national anthem at least. After that, the crowd gave him back to the suite behind the glass and got on with the business of watching basketball.
Game 4 is scheduled for Wednesday at Madison Square Garden. The NYPD confirmed the outdoor watch party outside MSG will return for Game 4, Trump’s attendance at which remains unconfirmed. Whether the president will attempt a second night in the arena — and whether the Knicks will fare better without the political sideshow consuming the pregame hours — is what New York will spend the next 48 hours arguing about.
What the Spurs will spend it on is less contested: they have closed a series deficit before, survived seven games against Oklahoma City, and showed in Game 3 that they are built for exactly the kind of grinding, physical basketball that wears on a team more comfortable with momentum than attrition. The Knicks still lead. But the runway has shortened, and the margin for error — with or without a president in the building — has narrowed considerably.
