NEW YORK — In any venue, President Donald Trump and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City might dominate the spotlight, especially if the two happened to be at the same place at the same time.

But on Monday, the two heavyweights from New York will be side attractions at best, watching with the rest of a sold-out Madison Square Garden as the city’s prevailing megastars — the New York Knicks — return for Game 3 of the NBA finals.

The team’s success has transformed the energy of the city, whipping it into an irrepressible froth of orange and blue excitement, with each game at the Garden becoming a magnet for celebrities, political leaders and superfans — both inside and outside the arena.

The Knicks are returning to the most famous basketball arena in the world having won 13 games in a row, the last four on the road, with a championship in reach for the first time in more than a half-century.

Monday will also be a homecoming of sorts for Trump, a native New Yorker whose last center-stage appearance at the Garden was a crass reminder of his political and cultural impact, weeks before he won the 2024 presidential election. He would return weeks later as president-elect, attending an Ultimate Fighting Championship event accompanied by Elon Musk, Joe Rogan and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., among others. The crowds at both events greeted Trump like a hero; Knicks fans are unlikely to greet him as warmly.

Despite his differences with the president, Mamdani has shown a willingness to cultivate Trump’s capricious goodwill and seemed game to play the gracious host.

“We’re excited to welcome anyone and everyone who’s rooting for the Knicks in this moment,” Mamdani said during a Friday radio interview, referring to a president he has, in other contexts, called a “despot” and an embodiment of “the culture of corruption.”

Trump and Mamdani each rose to power as on-screen main characters. But the opportunity to assess them as bystanders — or bysitters, as they will be Monday — is rare. Trump comes to the Garden with his ratings at a second-term low, contending with a hard-to-quell war of his own making and a potentially restive base. He is expected to sit in a suite, in keeping with his long-standing desire to project inordinate wealth.

Mamdani, who took office in January, has won international adulation as a darling of the global left, even as he has endured a crash course in governing the country’s largest city. In keeping with his consistent effort to portray himself as an ally of the working class, he is expected to sit in a vastly inferior seat (albeit one that still costs thousands of dollars on the secondary market).

Joe Calvello, a spokesperson for Mamdani, said the mayor was paying his own way, but declined to say how much his ticket cost. A spokesperson for Madison Square Garden referred questions about the president’s ticket to the White House, which declined to comment.

The presence of the mayor and the president is a boon to the NBA, already experiencing soaring ratings, but a headache for the Garden, which will have to bear the weight of the additional security entailed by the presence of two high-profile politicians. The Secret Service will secure arrangements for Trump, while Mamdani will be guarded by his Police Department detail.

Matt McCool, the top U.S. Secret Service agent in New York, is overseeing security for Trump’s attendance at Game 3 and said his agency would coordinate closely with the Police Department.

He said there would be a number of road closures for the president’s arrival and throngs of agents and police officers at the game. Garbage trucks will block off streets to discourage people from driving to the Garden.

The arena will have a no-bag policy; attendees should arrive two hours early to get through security in time to be seated by tipoff; and the watch party just outside the arena has been canceled.

The president and the mayor will come to watch a hometown team none of whose players easily fits the celebrity mold into which Trump and Mamdani slot so readily.

In a sport where teams often try to lure multiple big-name, ball-hogging superstars, the Knicks stand apart in their unusual collectivity. Their leader is Jalen Brunson, the model of the strong, silent type that Tony Soprano once lamented was going extinct. Their soul is Josh Hart, a 6-foot-4 rebounding machine who justifies his place in the starting lineup through pure willpower. And their heart is Karl-Anthony Towns, who spoke about his experience in Game 1 in San Antonio with the joy and candor of youth.

Mamdani, only four years older than Towns, is not a lifelong Knicks die-hard and until very recently, had sometimes seemed to hold the team at an arm’s length. After the Knicks won the Eastern Conference finals last month, he acknowledged fans’ ardor as someone standing somewhat apart from it.

“Knicks fans are incredibly excited — as we all should be,” he said. “This is an incredible moment for the city.”

But in the past week, he has incorporated Knicks fandom into nearly every facet of his political messaging.

During a Thursday Twitch appearance, where the mayor took questions from viewers, Mamdani sat in front of a Brunson jersey and wore a Knicks pin on his lapel. Last Monday, in a social media stunt that has since been viewed more than 14 million times on the social platform X, he signed an “executive order” repealing children’s bedtimes during the NBA finals, while surrounded by children.

On Wednesday, he watched Game 1 of the finals in upper Manhattan with Darializa Avila Chevalier, his chosen candidate in a Democratic primary against the incumbent, Rep. Adriano Espaillat. During the postgame broadcast, he appeared in a 30-second spot alongside Chevalier and two other candidates he has endorsed. After the game, Mamdani drove by the Garden to greet fans attending a watch party that he had permitted to go forward despite the Police Department’s objections, which has led to more than 30 people being taken into custody over the course of the series’ first two games.

Trump is a fan of sorts. He frequently appeared on Celebrity Row at the Garden in his New York heyday. But when he has discussed the team in recent weeks, he has for the most part gravitated toward one name — not Brunson, Hart or KAT, but James Dolan, the team’s famously unpopular owner, whom Trump describes as “nice” and said had invited him to the finals.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Jonah E. Bromwich, Dana Rubinstein and William K. Rashbaum/Shuran Huang
c. 2026 The New York Times Company