President Donald Trump attended the start of Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden and was loudly booed as the New York Knicks fell 115-111 to the San Antonio Spurs.
The scene mattered beyond the score. James Dolan sat beside Trump in a bulletproof box beneath the Lexus Suite Level while fans paid as much as $11,000 each for upper balcony seats — Jake Borden and Destiny Krause left the Jersey Shore a few minutes before 3 p.m. for the 8:30 tipoff and each paid that price — and long lines and heavy security punctuated the night.
Numbers and moments gave weight to the complaint: Game 3 was the first NBA Finals game in Manhattan in a generation, and many attendees said the event felt constrained by the protection detail around the president. Jake Borden, who came with Krause, said, "We love the Knicks," then added, "Oh, way too expensive. I mean, there’s a lot of fans out there, and it should be more accessible." He later said, "Walking by some fans (saying), ‘We couldn’t get tickets,’ and they really deserve to be here. There’s a lot of people who don’t even care about the Knicks who might be here, you know, big suits. It should be for the fans."
Context deepened the scene: the president’s presence prompted heightened security that fans described as a police-state setup, and the optics were sharpened by James Dolan’s proximity to Trump — Dolan has previously drawn fan ire, including a 2019 ban for someone who told him to "sell the team," and he allowed Trump to host a rally at Madison Square Garden in 2024. A man identified as Steve C. summed up part of the crowd’s feeling: "The orange man should not be here."
That friction — what was meant to be a big New York moment for Dolan and Trump — became for many attendees an expensive, disruptive and frustrating night that, critics say, pushed the city’s fans to the sidelines. Fans described delays, heavier screening and an atmosphere more attentive to security than to the first Finals game Manhattan had seen in decades.
As attention turns to NBA Game 4, one clear question remains: how much of Monday’s heavy security footprint was driven specifically by the president’s attendance, and what role did the league play in arranging it? Neither the scope of the presidential security planning nor any formal statement from the NBA has been resolved, and that unanswered point will shape how future marquee games in dense, high-profile venues are managed.
