Dolan Defends Trump's NBA Finals Appearance: He Was Awake the Whole Time

When President Trump showed up at Madison Square Garden for Game 3 of the NBA Finals, he probably didn’t expect to become the center of a social media firestorm about whether he was, well, actually awake during the game. But that’s exactly what happened when photos of him in a luxury suite made the rounds online, with viewers zeroing in on his eyes and jumping to the conclusion that he’d dozed off.

Enter James Dolan. The Knicks owner, who was sitting right next to the sitting president during Monday night’s contest, decided to set the record straight during a radio interview with Craig Carton on WFAN.“Where do they get this from?”Dolan asked, brushing off the“Sleep-gate”controversy with the certainty of someone who was literally there.“I was with him the whole time. We were talking the whole time. Maybe he was sleep-talking. He was very much awake and very much engaged.”

The context here makes the whole thing even more amusing. The Knicks were riding a 13-game win streak heading into the game—the kind of momentum that usually feels unbeatable. Then they lost 115-111, and naturally, some fans decided to place the blame squarely on their presidential guest. It’s the kind of superstitious sports logic that fans have leaned on forever, but Dolan wasn’t about to let that narrative stick.

What’s telling is that Dolan seemed genuinely unbothered by the loss itself. Instead, he emphasized the historic nature of having a sitting president attend an NBA Finals game—something that’s apparently never happened before.“That is a huge honor, and he’s a New Yorker. Whatever you think about him, he’s a Knicks fan, and people don’t want to hear this, I think he’s a great guy,”Dolan said. The two go way back, long before Trump held the nation’s highest office, when he was a real estate titan making waves in New York City.

The real drama seems to be less about whether Trump was asleep and more about Dolan’s apparent war of words with Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of NYC—but that’s a different story for a different day. Game 4 tips off soon, and one thing’s for certain: the camera operators will be watching the luxury suite extra closely.