Please, (G)od, if you are who people make you out to be, all-powerful, make sure Donald Trump makes it to a New York Knicks game – Game 3 or Game 4, no preference.
Trump assumes he’ll be showered with love from the Madison Square Garden crowd, but he’ll find out quick, the NBA ain’t the UFC.
“You know, if the president comes to watch the Knicks, I’ll leave the president to watch the Knicks as he wants to watch the Knicks,” said the freshman New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who attended Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals, which, of course, was a Knicks win – the Knickerbockers have won 11 straight playoff games, becoming just the fifth NBA team to accomplish that feat in a single postseason.
Mamdani, of course, caught hell for being in attendance from the partisan New York Post, which noted the cost of the mayor’s tickets – he was sitting in the cheap seats, so, the tickets ran him $700 a pop.
“It was lovely to be in the nosebleeds,” Mamdani said, during a Thursday press conference.
Author’s note: I sat nosebleeds at MSG, in the upper press section, for the UVA-Michigan State game in the 2014 Sweet Sixteen.
I was on the sixth floor of the Garden; and I can vouch that, you actually can tell from way, way up there that there is a basketball game going on in the vicinity.
Trump, naturally, won’t have that problem – nor will he have to foot the bill for either his tickets in whatever luxury box the billionaire owner of the Knicks, James Dolan, leaves for him, or the added cost to security that a presidential visit to a live sporting event will bring to the city.
Every day is your birthday when you’re Donald Trump.
Except for whichever day – Game 3 will be at MSG on Monday, June 8; Game 4 is Wednesday, June 10 – he decides on for his NBA Finals trip.
Free advice: aim for Game 3; the Knicks are going to be heavy underdogs against either Oklahoma City or San Antonio, and could very well find themselves down two games-to-none when they get back East.
For that matter, if I’m Trump, I’m doing my Finals thing either in Oklahoma City (2024 election in Oklahoma: Trump +34.3) or in San Antonio (2024 election in Texas: Trump +13.6).
New York, and specifically, Manhattan, not favorable: Manhattan was +64 Kamala Harris in 2024.
James Dolan likes banning fans from games for the most minor of infractions; he might have an empty MSG if the Knicks survive the Trumpstorm and make it to a Game 6.
A reporter at the Thursday presser tried to get Mamdani to call Trump a fair-weather fan.
He didn’t take the bait.
“I’m not going to do any analysis of the president’s fandom,” the Democratic Socialist mayor said of his strange political bedfellows MAGA friend. “I will say that anyone who wants to come and watch the Knicks, and pray that [Landry Shamet] keeps making those threes, and we see ‘Captain Clutch’ out there on the court, I think everybody should be welcomed there.”
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Chris Graham
