Timóthée Chalamet has been nominated for the Academy Award four times. He has never won. On Saturday night in San Antonio, with champagne being poured over his head in the New York Knicks’ locker room at Frost Bank Center, the actor made his feelings about that track record unmistakably clear: “Way rather this than the Oscars. C’mon, baby. Knicks are champions, baby.”
The clip — delivered to an ESPN camera during the Knicks’ first NBA championship celebration in 53 years — went viral within hours, generating the kind of social media traction that Oscar campaigns spend millions trying to engineer. The reactions ranged from affectionate (“this man has never been more relatable”) to pointed (“he’s never getting an Oscar now”), but what no one disputed was that Chalamet, the most famous superfan attached to a franchise that hadn’t won a title since 1973, was genuinely, undeniably, ecstatically happy.
The Knicks defeated the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the 2026 NBA Finals at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio to claim the franchise’s first championship since the Willis Reed era. Jalen Brunson — who scored 45 points and was named Finals MVP — heard from Chalamet directly in the locker room: “You did that, bro. You got the ring, bro. That was all you.” Chalamet also hugged Karl-Anthony Towns and greeted owner James Dolan and franchise legend Allan Houston during the celebration. The champagne cost him: a stray spray caught him directly in the eye, prompting a deadpan locker room joke. “I’m not an athlete,” he said. “Usually I have a stunt double to do that.”
The Oscars comment landed with such resonance because the context is recent and raw. At the 98th Academy Awards on March 15, 2026, Chalamet was the heavy favorite to win Best Actor for his performance as eccentric table tennis prodigy Marty Mauser in Marty Supreme — he entered awards night holding a 79 percent winning probability in forecasts. He lost. Michael B. Jordan won the night’s biggest acting prize for Sinners, in which Jordan played identical twin brothers who return to their Jim Crow-era Southern hometown and face a supernatural confrontation. Chalamet sat in the front row — Kylie Jenner at his side in a fiery red dress — and “was all smiles, clapping” according to press pool reports: gracious to the end, and winless again.
It was his second consecutive Best Actor loss. The year before, Chalamet was nominated for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown and again came away empty-handed. Four Oscar nominations, zero wins. He has now attended more Knicks games this season than Academy Award ceremonies in which his name was called — and on Saturday night in San Antonio, it showed.
On the court after the final buzzer, Chalamet posed for photos with Mikal Bridges while holding up a mock-up of The New York Post — the tabloid that has covered the Knicks’ title run in the same all-caps back-page style it reserves for its most defining sports moments. The image circulated almost as fast as the ESPN quote. Chalamet’s status as one of the franchise’s most visible celebrity superfans has been documented since the Knicks’ playoff run began, when he appeared courtside alongside Spike Lee at multiple postseason games. The director, another Knicks fixture, was also in San Antonio for Game 5.
Chalamet was far from alone in the celebrity section at Frost Bank Center. Sydney Sweeney, Ben Stiller — who is producing an HBO documentary on the Knicks’ championship run — Adam Sandler, and Spike Lee were among the famous Knicks loyalists who made the trip to San Antonio for the clinching game. The roster of celebrity attendees illustrated just how completely the 2026 championship run had captured New York’s cultural imagination — and how far the franchise’s famous fans were willing to travel to see it finished.
For Chalamet, the next act arrives in December 2026, when Dune: Part Three opens — and 2027 Oscar conversation around his return as Paul Atreides has already begun to circulate in Hollywood. Whether the performance will finally deliver the Academy Award that has twice slipped away in consecutive years is the question. For now, he has a championship T-shirt, a champagne-soaked eye, and the most-replayed celebrity sports clip of 2026. The Hollywood Reporter’s gallery of celebrities at the 2026 NBA Finals documents the full scene at Frost Bank Center, while Yahoo Sports covers Chalamet’s full championship celebration in the Knicks’ locker room. His Oscar journey — including what happened when Kylie Jenner was at his side in March and Michael B. Jordan’s name was called — is covered in full by The Hollywood Reporter’s account of his Best Actor loss at the 98th Academy Awards.
