President Trump draws boos as he attends NBA Finals Game 3 at MSG – The New York Times
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NBA Finals
U.S. President Donald Trump listens to the national anthem before the start of Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Monday. Samuel Corum / Getty Images
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NEW YORK — In the middle of the national anthem, moments before the first NBA Finals game at Madison Square Garden in 27 years, President Donald J. Trump stood at attention in his suite, surrounded by bulletproof glass, and was roundly booed by his fellow New Yorkers as he was shown on the overhanging video board.
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The first sitting U.S. president to attend a finals game, Trump, 79, of New York, was booed louder than the San Antonio Spurs. He was shown long enough for the fans lustily booing him to see him smirk.
And then the Knicks dropped Game 3, 115-111. It was their first playoff loss since April 23 and snapped a historic 13-game winning streak. It just didn’t go well for anyone rooting for New York, from Penn Station to Pennsylvania Ave.
The massive amount of extra security needed for a president to sit indoors with 20,000 hoops fans became an inconvenience for the city and a defining storyline going into the game — with extraordinarily long lines to get in, the no-bag policy and canceled watch parties outside of the Garden.
Trump, invited to attend Game 3 of the finals by Knicks owner James Dolan, was seated in a suite near midcourt, halfway up the stands, in a box surrounded by bulletproof glass constructed for his visit. NBA commissioner Adam Silver joined the suite in the second quarter and spoke with Trump, who was snacking on a bucket of fries and sipping from a Diet Coke bottle.
Trump’s granddaughter Kai Trump was also spotted in the suite, as were Dolan, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin and Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, among others. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani was also at the game — he said he paid $1,000 for a standing-room-only ticket near the rafters.
Trump arrived in Manhattan just before 7:20 p.m. ET on Marine One, taking a short flight from New Jersey. The motorcade took the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive from Wall Street up to the Garden, passing several Knicks watch parties along the way. Reporters traveling with Trump counted two middle fingers and one thumbs down, signs that said “Nobody wants you here,” “Trump must go,” and “Impeach. Convict. Remove.”
Trump appeared to have stayed for most, if not all, of the game. His motorcade left at 11:35 p.m.
Police and Secret Service agents set up a wide security perimeter around the Garden starting at 4 p.m. No one without a ticket or work credentials could get through the fences restricting access, and then they were made to stand in long, airport security-like lines to get into the arena. Fans were prohibited from bringing bags, and Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox said players were asked to limit what they brought into the arena and were searched by Secret Service agents upon entering the arena.
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Footage of 7-foot-4 French star Victor Wembanyama being screened in a pair of shorts after getting off the Spurs bus made waves on social media.
A free Knicks watch party for fans without tickets was relocated from outside the Garden to Bryant Park, where there were reports of fights and police in riot gear near the end of the game. Numerous videos taken from the park showed fans booing Trump as he appeared on projector screens. Some bars inside the security perimeter were boarded up for the evening.
“I think the president being here makes it inconvenient on everybody else,” Fox said. “We have more security, we had to send stuff early, I think our buses are getting there a little early.”
Trump was invited to attend a finals game by Dolan, a supporter of the president who has contributed more than $1.1 million to funds supporting Trump’s three campaigns and allowed him to use the Garden for a political rally at the close of the 2024 election.
In a 2018 interview with ESPN, Dolan said he knew Trump for a long time and said they were friends. “You don’t have to agree with everything that he’s doing in order to support him,” Dolan said. “And he’s, by the way, our president, and I don’t understand people who wish our president to do badly. Why would you wish your president to do badly? It’s like wishing that your milkman will bring you sour milk.”
Neither coach of the respective teams wanted to discuss the president’s attendance before Game 3. Knicks coach Mike Brown said, “I’m just locked in, man, on Game 3. A lot of people text me all the time about this and that, and for me, my focus is just what’s next and what’s in front of me, and Game 3 is in front of us right now.”
Spurs coach Mitch Johnson added, “There’s a lot going on, and I’d much rather be a part of it than not.”
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On the U.S. Senate floor in Washington on Monday, Charles Schumer, Democrat from New York, said, “Tonight ought to be all about the game, the players and the fans. But Donald Trump wants to make tonight about himself, like he always does.
“Midtown has to shut down. Bars near the Garden are about to take a huge hit on what should be their biggest night of the year. And free watch parties near the Garden have been canceled because Trump can’t bear letting anyone else be the center of attention for one night.”
The last sitting president to attend an NBA game was President Barack Obama in 2015 when he saw his Chicago Bulls host the Cleveland Cavaliers for their season opener.
Trump attended the 2025 Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans shortly after his inauguration, and in January attended the College Football National Championship between Indiana and Miami in Miami Gardens, Fla.
Trump has a checkered history with the NBA that stretches back decades to when he was a real estate mogul and reality TV star living in New York and rooting for the Knicks. He was a frequent patron of “celebrity row” at the Garden, where the stars sit on the court or near it and are shown on the video boards, and went to at least one 1994 NBA Finals game between the Knicks and the Houston Rockets. He also attended the NBA Draft at the Garden in 2003 when LeBron James went No. 1 overall to the Cavaliers.
Trump made a cameo in a 2004 “I Love This Game” spot for the NBA in which he said “I love this game, and if you don’t, you’re fired” — his catch phrase from his TV show “The Apprentice.” Trump’s spot was filmed on the baseline at the Garden while current NBA commissioner Adam Silver oversaw NBA Entertainment. Silver also has a friendly relationship with Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner.
“Before he ever ran for office he was a big Knicks fan,” Silver said last week. “I’ve been with the league for a long time, I was there at many Knicks games with him in the old days. … I think President Trump is very much a New Yorker and I’m thrilled that yet another New Yorker wants to participate in the enthusiasm and the joy around this Knick team.”
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Like most major professional sports leagues, the NBA is participating in the country’s 250th birthday by having its championship teams USA250 patches on their jerseys. Silver was among the heads of sport scheduled to attend a news conference announcing the patches last winter that was canceled due to bad weather and scheduling conflicts with the NFL.
No NBA champion has visited the White House during either of Trump’s terms, and his first four years in office were marked by some very public spats with two of the most popular players in the world.
The Golden State Warriors won the finals during Trump’s first year in office, in 2017, and during training camp that September, Stephen Curry said he would vote “no” if the team got an invitation to visit. Trump, after seeing Curry’s comments, wrote on social media that the “invitation is withdrawn.” James, at the time a member of the Cavaliers and frequent Trump critic who openly campaigned for his 2016 opponent, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, responded to Trump on social media by calling him “u bum” and saying Curry “already said he ain’t going! So therefore ain’t no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!”
Also in 2017, former Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who often used his pregame talks with reporters to criticize the president, called Trump “a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others” in response to Trump’s claim that Obama and other commanders-in-chief “didn’t make calls” to families of fallen soldiers.
When the NBA finished the 2020 season in a “bubble” at Disney World to work around the COVID-19 virus, most of the players knelt in unison prior to the national anthem to protest police violence against African Americans. Trump called it “disgraceful” in an interview with Fox News, and posted to social media:
“People are tired of watching the highly political @NBA. Basketball ratings are WAY down, and they won’t be coming back. I hope football and baseball are watching and learning because the same thing will be happening to them. Stand tall for our Country and our Flag!!!”
(In an ironic twist, Knicks forward Josh Hart, at the time a member of the New Orleans Pelicans, responded to Trump’s social media post by calling him a derogatory term. Who knew they’d all be at the same finals game six years later?)
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James, who was at Disney and eventually led the Los Angeles Lakers to the championship that fall, said, “I really don’t think the basketball community are sad about losing his viewership, him viewing the game.
“The game will go on without his eyes on it. I can sit here and speak for all of us who love the game of basketball and we could care less.”
Nearly six years later, Trump’s eyes were back on the court for the most anticipated basketball game in New York since 1999, with TV ratings soaring and Popovich’s team playing against Trump’s Knicks.
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