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Celebrities Are Stealing the Show in the Knicks’ Playoff Run

The basketball may be good, but Madison Square Garden’s ‘Celebrity Row’ is even better; ‘Everyone loves a happy Timothée!’

Famous faces like Kylie Jenner, center, and Timothée Chalamet, right, have made watching the sidelines a highlight of Knicks games during the NBA Playoffs. Photo: Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images

Famous faces like Kylie Jenner, center, and Timothée Chalamet, right, have made watching the sidelines a highlight of Knicks games during the NBA Playoffs. Photo: Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images

Here’s Timothée Chalamet, making a rare public appearance with Kylie Jenner. There’s Kylie’s sister Kendall, bumping into her former flame Bad Bunny. Make way for Cardi B and Stefon Diggs, seemingly announcing a new romance to the world.

It’s not the Oscars, or the Golden Globes, or even a high-class house party in the Hollywood Hills. It’s “Celebrity Row” at Madison Square Garden, where, deep into a Knicks playoff run, the A-listers are running amok.

Oh, yeah, and there’s basketball happening, too: The Knicks are in the Eastern Conference Finals, trying to claw back from a 3-1 deficit to the Indiana Pacers

But you’d be forgiven for taking your eye off the ball. Because on the sidelines, relationships have been launched. Gossip has been spread. Memes have been made. And one young star has rocketed up the celebrity-fan leaderboard. 

The real action may be on the court. But during the playoffs, the Garden’s Celebrity Row has been a stage all its own. 

Even when the Knicks are bad—which they have been for most of this century—they draw a famous crowd. Spike Lee is perhaps the team’s most prominent superfan, but he’s been joined for years by the likes of Tracy Morgan and Julianne Moore. 

“A Knicks ticket has always been the hottest ticket in town,” said Madeline Hill, who co-hosts a podcast about sports gossip. “But for celebrities and public figures, getting invited to sit courtside is like a signal that they are in the A-list bracket—that they get the stamp of approval.”

 

Stefon Diggs and Cardi B courtside at a Knicks game.
New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs and rapper Cardi B sit courtside at Madison Square Garden. Photo: Elsa/Getty Images

 

The Knicks don’t publicly disclose how Celebrity Row seats are allocated, or how much they cost. If you can’t get a Garden bigwig on the phone and still want to sit next to someone famous, it’ll cost you: two courtside seats to tonight’s Game 5 are available for more than $50,000 a ticket on the secondary market.

Other teams draw big-time stars, but there’s something different in New York, Hill explained. 

“When I think about the Lakers, they often attract more of the hot people of the exact moment—you see more TikTok and internet stars,” she said. The Knicks crowd “feels like it’s more ride-or-die fans who just happen to be famous people.” 

This spring, they’ve taken it up a notch. “You’re seeing a lot more names that everybody knows,” said Colin Smith, who runs a Knicks fan account on X. 

These days, the Knicks-focused corners of social media are full of chatter about the game—and posts about stars like Dave Chappelle and Larry David. Perhaps no celebrity has made more of the moment than Timothée Chalamet. 

The “Dune” megastar is a longtime Knicks fan. Way back in 2010, a pre-fame Chalamet won a pair of tickets by tracking down two of the team’s players at Grand Central Terminal. This season, he’s joined the team on the road in Boston and Indiana, often alongside fellow fanatic Ben Stiller. He’s wearing eye-catching orange and blue jeans from the cult L.A. brand Chrome Hearts and a pair of the custom Timberland boots in the same palette. While his pals were at the Met Gala earlier this month, he posted a photo to Instagram that showed the Knicks-Celtics game playing on an iPad.

The whole thing has reminded Hill of the viral pre-Oscars promotional run Chalamet embarked on earlier this year. Then, the actor wore clothes that evoked iconic Bob Dylan outfits to publicize his role in “A Complete Unknown.” Now, he’s got a Knicks-fan twist. 

“It almost feels like a ‘For Your Consideration’ campaign,” she said, referring to ads aimed at awards voters, “but it’s just to prove that he’s going to be the next Spike Lee.”

 

Timothee Chalamet and Spike Lee celebrating a New York Knicks win.
Chalamet and Spike Lee celebrate after the Knicks defeated the Celtics. The actor has rocketed up the celebrity-fan leaderboard to join Lee at the top. Photo: Elsa/Getty Images

 

Fan-run social accounts like timotheeupdates are posting content related not to movie roles but to Chalamet’s hoops fandom. 

“People love to see Timothée being passionate about something, whether it’s basketball-related or movie-related,” one of the account’s moderators said. The most successful posts, they added, “are the ones [that] show him being really happy about something! Everyone loves a happy Timothée!”

The people behind the account are Brazilian and “none of us watch basketball often,” one moderator said. “It’s not a very popular sport in Brazil.”

Of particular interest was Game 4 of the Knicks’ series against the Celtics, which Chalamet attended with Kylie Jenner, whom he’s been dating, and her sister Kendall Jenner. A veritable storm of gossip and intrigue ensued. The couple’s public outing was also a reunion between Kylie and her one-time best friend Jordyn Woods—herself the girlfriend of Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns. Longtime Kardashian-Jenner observers also clocked the appearance of Bad Bunny, an ex of Kendall’s.

The appearance, Hill said, may have been strategic. “A lot of these celebrities use these courtside moments as opportunities to either promote a project, or launch a relationship. It’s almost a version of a PR statement,” she said. “They’re showing up courtside because they want to be seen. They’re not sitting in, like, section 322.”

Suni Lee poses with Knicks player OG Anunoby after an Emirates NBA Cup game.
Suni Lee poses with OG Anunoby after a game at Madison Square Garden. Photo: Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images

Additional film-worthy story lines abound. Romance-inclined Knicks fans joke that mild-mannered forward OG Anunoby plays better when Anne Hathaway and Olympic gymnast Suni Lee are in the crowd. Larry David and Susie Essman are one mistimed stretch away from re-enacting a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” plotline. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has taken in a few games courtside—even as his company prepares for life without NBA broadcast rights next season.

Game 5, tonight in New York, might mark the end of the line this season for the Knicks, and the end of the show for their famous fans—and their fans’ fans. But as far as some observers are concerned, all those celebrities are getting in the way of good basketball. 

For all their success this season, the Knicks have a losing record at home in the playoffs. One theory for the players’ struggles, New York sports-radio host Boomer Esiason reasoned on air this week? “I think they’re just sick and tired of all the goddamn celebrities.”

Write to Sam Schube at sam.schube@wsj.com

 

Author: Sam Schube

Source: WSJ:

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