NEW YORK – There was a time when Donald Trump was simply another high-profile figure enjoying the energetic courtside atmosphere at New York Knicks games. Although he was already a celebrity, he was not yet accompanied by Secret Service agents or defined by the political controversies that have since polarized opinions about him in his hometown.
Fast forward more than ten years since his last Knicks game at Madison Square Garden, and Trump is making a rare return to New York City, this time as president. His visit is to support the Knicks in Game 3 of the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs on Monday night. Invited by Knicks owner James Dolan, Trump is set to become the first sitting president to witness an NBA Finals game in person.
The Knicks are on a quest to secure their first championship since 1973, a time when Trump was just 26 and beginning his journey in the family real estate business that eventually brought him wealth and recognition. Just two years following that championship, the team’s then-owners recruited Trump as a consultant while they explored the possibility of selling the arena.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has attended more major sporting events than any of his predecessors. His appearances include the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500, and golf’s Ryder Cup in the New York City suburbs, where he was met with cheers. However, his presence at last year’s U.S. Open men’s tennis championship in Queens was met with boos, with attendees blaming him for the prolonged security lines.
As Trump approaches his 80th birthday on June 14, amid numerous challenges such as the ongoing conflict with Iran, economic instability, and legal decisions hampering his agenda, he plans to host a UFC fight on the White House grounds. Furthermore, he has shown interest in attending the upcoming World Cup, which is set to kick off this week across the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
Despite the grandeur of his presidential engagements, for many New Yorkers, their affection for the Knicks still surpasses their feelings towards Trump.
Trump is an avid sports fan, but the affinity he professes for the Knicks is different.
It speaks to the Republican president’s identity as a New Yorker and harkens to a bygone era where a front-row seat at a Knicks game was a chance for him and other boldface names to see and be seen.
In a city whose wealthy gatekeepers largely turned their noses at Trump’s brash personality and playboy image in the 1990s and 2000s, the Garden’s Celebrity Row was one club where he felt at home.
“I’ve been a Knick fan for a long time,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last week, a day after New York rallied to win Game 1. “I watched that end of the game and they were dominant — really amazing.”
After another win Friday in San Antonio, the Knicks head home with a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. They have won a remarkable 13 straight playoff games and last lost on April 23, uniting the city in a way unseen since the Knicks went to the NBA Finals twice in the 1990s.
Enter Trump. He returns to the Knicks zeitgeist not as the tabloid curiosity who once sat shoulder to shoulder with the late John F. Kennedy Jr. at a game in 1999, but as a president who is disliked by a majority of the city’s Democratic voters.
Trump, who gave up his lifelong New York residency for Florida in 2019, is making his first trip to New York City since he spoke at the United Nations in September.
Knicks fans, though, do not seem to be concerned so much with his politics, but that his attendance — and the hoopla accompanying it — could mess up the team’s momentum.
“Why does Donald Trump always have to ruin a good thing?” U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, an avid Knicks fan and the House Democratic leader, told CNN. “Like, literally, the Knicks haven’t been in the NBA finals for 27 years. The city is trying to celebrate this. We’ve embraced this team, and this guy has to inject himself.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat who struck up a cordial relationship with Trump after the two met in November, was more inviting.
“We’re excited to welcome anyone and everyone who’s rooting for the Knicks in this moment,” said Mamdani, who will also be at the game — albeit, not with Trump.
Last week, as Trump began floating the idea of attending a game, New York magazine published an article, “Is Trump Really a Knicks Fan? An Investigation.” The story, filled with pictures of Trump at Knicks games from 1991 to 2014, described him as a “textbook example of a celebrity bandwagon fan.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver disagrees.
“Before he ever ran for office, he was a big Knicks fan,” Silver told reporters 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.”
A courtside regular in the 1990s
Trump and the Knicks came into existence the same year, 1946.
His affiliation with the team — at least in the public record — dates to 1975 when he acted as a real estate adviser to the then-owners of the Knicks and Madison Square Garden, who were looking to sell the building known in a bit of Trump-style branding as “The World’s Most Famous Arena.”
Trump claimed to reporters at the time that two groups of “Arab oil interests” were interested in paying $50 million to $75 million. But the arena’s leadership passed on the idea, saying it was “not conceivable” to make such a deal during the Middle East oil crisis raging at the time.
Trump was not much of a known entity when the Knicks won their only championships in 1970 and 1973.
By the time they rebounded in the 1990s, Trump was front and center, taking his then-wife Marla Maples to Game 3 of the NBA Finals in 1994 and his current wife, first lady Melania Trump, to Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals in 1999. In between, he added to his Knicks fan bona fides with a cameo in the Knicks-themed Whoopi Goldberg film “Eddie” in 1996.
Back then, Trump was a more of a mythic figure than a consequential one, known as much for the women he dated and married as the buildings he built.
But just as those Knicks came up short in the NBA Finals against Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets and David Robinson and the Spurs, Trump was running into problems of his own. His business empire was in disarray after his casinos fell into financial trouble and his airline, Trump Shuttle, went out of business.
Like the Knicks, Trump went into rebuilding mode and charted a new course: reality TV with NBC’s “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice,” and then, politics. On a Knicks TV broadcast in 2010, he hinted at a possible presidential run.
That same year, as the Knicks struggled to recapture the magic of the 1990s, Trump recorded a video trying to persuade LeBron James to join the team.
“The real winners of the world want to be here,” Trump told him.
