President Donald Trump is attending Game 3 of the NBA Finals Monday evening, when the New York Knicks play their first home game of the series against the San Antonio Spurs.
And as expected, his selfish decision is ruining the experience for the actual Knicks fans who have waited more than two decades for their team to make the finals, and more than 40 years to see their team win a championship.
Due to security constraints ahead of the presidential appearance, the area around Madison Square Garden—which sits atop New York’s Penn Station, a commuter rail hub for more than 600,000 people daily—is a fortress.
A tall fence blocks anyone without a ticket from entering the area, which has in turn prevented fans who couldn’t afford the multi-thousand-dollar game tickets from gathering outside for watch parties.
Security is set up outside of Madison Square Garden in New York, Monday, June 8, 2026, as President Donald Trump is set to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals basketball series between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs.
APSecurity is set up outside of Madison Square Garden in New York on June 8 before Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs.
In fact, the area around the arena will be closed to all vehicular and pedestrian traffic starting four hours before the game, which will also hurt local businesses who cannot serve customers.
Meanwhile, employees working the game waited in a more than hour-long line to enter the arena where they work—so one can only imagine the lines that await the 20,000 fans with tickets to the game.
This isn’t the first time Trump’s attendance at a sporting event has caused problems for fans.
Last September, Trump went to the men’s tennis final at the U.S. Open tournament in Queens. His presence not only delayed the start, but it left thousands of fans waiting in such long security lines that they missed the first set of the match they paid hundreds—if not thousands—of dollars to see. In fact, the stadium was half empty for much of the game due to the long security lines.
“Everybody is pissed off and there was a lot of booing in the beginning. People from all over the world are standing here because they came to the U.S. Open to see tennis,” Leah Gomberg, who missed part of the match due to Trump’s attendance, told NBC News at the time. “Now it’s half-empty in there, although all the famous people are there, and of course Mr. Trump is in there, but not the people who paid a lot of money for their tickets.”
But Trump doesn’t think about anyone other than himself, so he didn’t care.
Ironically, Trump was asked over the weekend about the optics of his attendance at Monday’s Knicks game, as everyday Americans can’t afford the hefty ticket prices as high as $8,000.
“Well, I know, but they can watch it on television,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. “It’s sort of semi-free to watch it on TV. But that’s the way life is.”
Reporter: "The cheapest price for the Game 3 you're going to is $8,000. Everyday Americans can't afford these sporting events."Trump: "They can watch it on television. It's sort of semi-free to watch it on television. But it's the way life goes."
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2026-06-05T18:04:37.193Z
Funny—he, too, could watch the game on television. That’s what he spends most of his time doing when he’s not playing golf on the taxpayers’ dime. But instead, Trump is spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars he says are too scarce to help Americans afford the cost of living so he can go to a basketball game and make life harder for everyone else.
Ultimately, it’s unclear why Trump even wants to go. He has repeatedly trashed the NBA for being too woke and has never hosted a championship team at the White House.
The boos he’s likely to receive should be so thunderously loud that the arena will literally shake.
Related | Trump’s next thing to ruin: The NBA finals
And if the Knicks lose, he will be blamed for being the distraction that ended the team’s stunning and historic 13-game playoff win streak.
“I can tell you, like, as a politician, I’ve gone to my fair amount of sports games, they are just some things that like—you don’t want to go either to jinx it or just in general,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said Sunday, calling Trump’s presence a “vibe-killer.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who represents New York City, said he also doesn’t understand why Trump wants to go, as Trump is barely a Knicks fan.
Jeffries: "It's not clear to me that Donald Trump is a big Knicks fan. I mean, does this guy even know the difference between Karl Rove and Karl Anthony Towns? I don't think so. He's just injecting himself."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-06-08T18:40:56.476Z
“I mean, does this guy even know the difference between Karl Rove and Karl Anthony Towns?” Jeffries said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. “I don’t think so! He’s just injecting himself into the NBA finals because he always has to bring the MAGA circus into down. And that’s unfortunate.”
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