Call It The Trump Effect

Once again, the President had to make it all about himself. And he spoiled the party.

Trump booed at MSG, Photo courtesy of AP News

Trump ruins everything he touches.

The latest proof? On Monday night, for the first time in 27 years, the New York Knicks hosted an NBA Finals game at Madison Square Garden. The city had been building toward this for weeks: 13 straight playoff wins as part of a 46-day winning streak, a 2–0 series lead over the San Antonio Spurs, and a cross-borough electricity rarely felt even in a metropolis of eight million.

The world’s most famous arena was about to host the most consequential basketball game played in New York since 1999. It would also, as the price of one man’s vanity, be locked down like a war zone.

Trump confirmed his attendance on Friday, citing an invitation from Knicks owner James Dolan, a longtime friend and campaign donor. “I’ve been a Knicks fan for a long time and also a Jim Dolan fan,” Trump told reporters. “He’s a nice guy.”

Trump showed up Monday night and promptly ruined everything.

Sports as political currency

Trump’s decision to crash the Knicks game was not an impulse. Since retaking office, he has attended the Super Bowl (the first sitting president to do so), the Daytona 500, the Ryder Cup, two UFC fights, the U.S. Open, the FIFA Club World Cup final and a Washington Commanders game—even going into the Fox broadcast booth during the latter. That’s roughly a dozen major sporting events in his second term alone, with a UFC fight night at the White House scheduled for June 14, Trump’s birthday.

According to communication professor Kara Alaimo, Trump’s strategy is “as old as human civilization.” Leaders often associate themselves with the pageantry and goodwill of major public events, borrowing the crowd’s energy for their own brand. Trump has refined the practice into a second-term signature move. As OutKick founder Clay Travis put it: “Sports has embraced President Trump for the second term in a way that it did not in the first term.”

The NBA Finals, though, presented a particular opportunity. The Knicks are New York. Trump grew up in New York. With Monday’s game being the first Finals game at MSG in a generation, the hometown team up 2–0 and two wins from their first championship since 1973, it was exactly the kind of cultural moment Trump couldn’t resist. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver gave him a warm official welcome, calling Trump “very much a New Yorker” and saying his attendance “adds to the bigness of the event.”

Ten city blocks closed

This is what the “bigness” of the event actually looked like for the tens of thousands of people who live, work and commute through Midtown Manhattan on a Monday evening:

Starting at 4 p.m., the NYPD established a security perimeter stretching from West 30th to West 35th Streets between Sixth and Eighth Avenues. Seventh and Eighth Avenues were closed to vehicles and all general pedestrian traffic. There were only five designated entry checkpoints. No one was permitted inside the zone without a ticket, a train to catch, a business to reach, or “some other authorized reason.” In all, it was ten blocks of one of the densest neighborhoods on earth, locked down six hours before tipoff.

Inside the perimeter, the security apparatus included a TSA-style magnetometer screening at every entrance. There was a strict no-bag policy, no exceptions, and no locker storage. Fans who showed up with a backpack or tote got sent away or were forced to discard it.

The Secret Service deployed drones and counter-drone technology, protective intelligence and specialized tactical units—“from the ground to the sky,” in the words of Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Matt McCool, who urged ticketed fans to arrive at the arena two hours before the 8:30 p.m. tipoff.

Attendees began lining up to enter MSG more than four hours before tipoff—a scene, as the AP observed, “more closely resembling New Year’s Eve in Times Square than the usual leadup to a basketball game.” For those who had paid upward of $7,000 earlier in the week for even the cheapest ticket just to get in the door, it was a horrible experience.

Greg Weldon had been in the stands when the Knicks were in the Finals more than half a century ago. He made the trip back from Florida with his son, standing in line outside MSG in his Knicks jersey. “You can’t really put a price on the experience,” he told reporters. The main inconvenience, he said, had been the sheer absence of information. “We’ve asked so many cops, Secret Service, guys with machine guns, what to do, where should we go. Nobody knows.”

The precedent from Trump’s other sporting appearances was not reassuring. At last year’s U.S. Open men’s singles final in Queens, thousands of fans missed the start of the match because of the security lines. The U.S. Tennis Association pushed back the start by a half-hour, and many fans still couldn’t get through in time.

The disruption reached inside the building long before tipoff. An MSG kitchen employee told NBC News that staff who normally enter the arena around 6 a.m. did not make it through the added screening until 8 a.m., two hours late, for people whose job it was to feed the crowd.

Even the players felt the disturbance in the force. Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox, speaking from courtside after arriving early, described the experience as “like getting screened by TSA.”

“I think the president being here just makes it inconvenient on everybody else,” Fox said. “We’ve got more security. We’ve got to send stuff early, our buses are a little earlier… A little inconvenient for the people that’s gotta play.”

The outdoor watch parties that had become a fixture of the playoff run, with fans gathering on Plaza33 outside MSG, game after game through 13 straight wins, were gone for the night. Mayor Zohran Mamdani scrambled to set up a substitute watch party at Bryant Park, half a mile north, capped at 5,000 and requiring pre-registration. “We improvise,” said Knicks guard Jose Alvarado, a New York native. “We’re New Yorkers. We’re going to find a way to watch a game, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Fan Gisele Cintron captured the mood outside: “I do feel sad, because the fans have been waiting for a while. I think they should be able to enjoy it outside. But it is what it is. We’ll make the best of it. New York always has fun, no matter what.”

“Get Lost”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a lifelong Knicks fan from Brooklyn, had been building toward this moment for days.

On Friday, speaking with CNN’s John Berman, he gave voice to the frustration felt by millions. “Why does Donald Trump always have to ruin a good thing? 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.”

He added, “I mean, come on, seriously, give us a break. Why doesn’t this guy just focus on trying to improve the quality of life of the American people? Because the Trump economy has been a disaster.”

By Monday, Jeffries’s exasperation had grown. “He has to make the America 250 celebration about himself. He’s got to make the World Cup about himself. He’s got to make the East Wing of the White House about himself. And now he wants to make this historic Knicks championship run about himself as well. Get lost. Doesn’t this guy have better things to do?”

Outside the arena, Jeffries added a kicker. “Does this guy even know the difference between Karl Rove and Karl-Anthony Towns? I don’t think so.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted on Instagram on Sunday that Trump’s attendance had “already been a vibe killer, because now the city has to shut down all the MSG watch parties that happen outside of the arena.” She noted she frequently skips major public sporting events herself, out of respect for the fans who would otherwise bear the security burden.

Stephen A. Smith, on ESPN’s First Take Monday morning, said he had been publicly pleading with Trump not to attend for days. “This president has no business showing up in New York City. I am dead serious. It is selfish. It is narcissistic. It is ridiculous that he is coming to this game.”

Even Ann Coulter piled on. The conservative commentator called Trump’s decision to accept Dolan’s invitation “selfish, narcissistic” and “the worst decision” of his presidency.

I can think of far worse, to be honest, like the Iran War, global tariff wars, and ICE and troop deployments in our major cities. But this was certainly one of the more pointless and selfish.

Booo!

Outside, before he had even made it inside, Trump’s motorcade arrived to a wall of sound. Fans lined the route with signs and profanity-laced jeers. Some gave him the middle finger. “Put them gas prices down!” one fan shouted before adding an expletive. “F— Trump, but we came here for the Knicks!” another hollered. The crowd broke into chants of “F— Trump, go Knicks!”

Trump’s response, as the jeering washed over him, was a smirk.

He has worn that public mask before. At the U.S. Open men’s final in Queens last fall—his home borough—he was booed on the ABC telecast. When he heard the crowd’s reaction, the AP reported, he “offered a smirk,” which “briefly made the boos louder.”

Inside MSG, as Broadway star Avery Wilson sang the National Anthem, the broadcast cut to Trump standing in the Dolan suite, his hand raised to his brow. Madison Square Garden erupted in boos. Faint claps could be heard, but they were swallowed by the crowd.

Trump, boarding Air Force One afterward, was asked about the reception. “It was, I think, mostly cheers,” he told reporters. “It was loud, and it was very enthusiastic.”

The Longest Blink

As the game wore on, cameras in the Dolan suite caught Trump with his eyes closed, hands clasped in his lap. His head dipped slightly for roughly 45 seconds before he reopened his eyes with a start, glanced around and refocused on the court. Footage of the moment spread across social media within minutes.

Trump napping through major public events has become a regular occurrence. In May, a Reuters photograph captured him with his eyes shut in the Oval Office. A White House-associated account responded with “He was blinking, you absolute moron.” MeidasTouch deployed the “long blink” defense again when the MSG footage surfaced.

Worse still, Trump was apparently dozing through one of the tighter fourth quarters of the NBA season. The Spurs had pulled ahead 111–104 with under two minutes to play. The Knicks clawed back to within two on an OG Anunoby three-pointer. The Garden was loud enough to rattle the windows. Trump, in his suite above it all, was catching some shut-eye.

Social media quickly delivered its verdict. “So he ruined the night for all of those people just to take another nap?” “He shut down New York and screwed over Knicks fans just to nap in a new location.” “Bringing half your cabinet courtside just to take a historic nap is wild.”

He also left before the buzzer. Photographers captured his motorcade departing MSG while the final seconds were still on the clock.

The Trump Curse

The Spurs won 115–111. The Knicks’ 13-game winning streak—a 46-day run that had turned an entire city into believers—was over. The series was now 2–1. Would the Knicks come back stronger, now that Trump was gone? We’ll have to see.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom shared the news of the Knicks’ loss alongside a screenshot of a recent White House tweet. The tweet read: “Call it the Trump Effect.”