On Wednesday night, the New York Knicks traveled to Texas to take on the San Antonio Spurs. Despite being short Jalen Brunson, the Knicks were 6.5 point favorites in large part due to the Spurs missing both Victor Wembanyama and De'Aaron Fox.
However, backup forward Sandro Mamukelashvili took over, making all seven of his 3-point shots and finishing with 34 points in 19 minutes, the most in NBA history by a player in under 20 total minutes played.
Of course, the performance was enough to go viral, but one detail stole all the attention.
After the game, Mamukelashvili introduced his friend, Grammy-award-winning rapper Flavor Flav, the world-famous hypeman for Public Enemy, one of the first major rap groups.
Flav is 41 years older than Mamukelashvili, and the NBA player hails from Tbilisi, Georgia, a world away from New York, where Flav was born and raised.
One would expect a prominent New York celebrity to cheer for the Knicks, but apparently Flav's friendship with "Mamu" has grown over the last several years.
"I've known him for a long time, we got really close, we FaceTime sometimes, we talk about stuff, we went to New York last summer, and he came to my first Summer League," explained Mamukelashvili after the game. "He was my financial advisor's friend, and since then we just kicked it off."
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Flav had never been to a Spurs game, but it was his birthday earlier this week and he decided to treat himself. He is well known for supporting women's sports, especially Team USA's Olympic water polo efforts, although the allure of the NBA was simply too much to pass up.
For tried-and-true New Yorkers, this could be seen as a betrayal, but Flav has just one message about his fandom: "Let me tell you something, I don't care what nobody says, my man is on FIRE," he declared at the Frost Bank Center.
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This story was originally published March 20, 2025 at 7:40 PM.