At 3 p.m. on Wednesday, several Knicks fans stood outside Madison Square Garden burning copal and sage before Game 4, trying to clear what they called the bad energy left behind by Donald Trump’s Monday-night visit and the team’s Game 3 loss.
Deisy put it bluntly: “We’re saging the Madison!” She said the space had felt wrong since Monday, when “MAGA Mussolini was here — and we gotta get rid of that energy!”
The ritual landed because the timing did. Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to attend the NBA Finals on Monday night, and thousands of fans booed when he appeared on the Jumbotron during the national anthem. Videos then spread on social media appearing to show him dozing off next to Knicks owner James Dolan and his granddaughter, Kai Trump, while the White House pushed back hard. Davis Ingle said, “Anyone ridiculously claiming the President was asleep is either lying or has severe brain damage.”
Outside the arena, the reaction was not just symbolic. Variety spoke to dozens of Knicks fans and spectators Wednesday afternoon, and the anger over Trump’s appearance was tied directly to the Knicks’ slide. New York had opened the series with a 2-0 lead before dropping Game 3, and for some fans the former president had become part of the explanation for why the momentum shifted.
Avery was among the people treating Trump like a bad omen. He held a sign that read, “F*ck Trump. Let’s go Knicks,” and said, “He’s a curse to every team that he picks.” Avery said Trump backed the Chiefs, went to a Mets game and attended the Knicks game, and each team lost. That kind of blame may sound like pure fan theater, but it has become part of the noise around the series, the same way celebrity appearances have at other playoff stops, from the Timothee Chalamet buzz in San Antonio to a Bill Bradley watch party at Rikers.
The security footprint around Madison Square Garden added another layer. A sprawling 12-block barrier blocked entry on Monday night to anyone without a game ticket or business tied to the area, and hundreds of NYPD officers and security personnel enforced it. Sadat said the barricades “absolutely” hurt business for independent sellers and brick-and-mortar shops, and the damage lingered even after the security detail thinned out. Even with no Secret Service agents in sight on Wednesday, the barrier was still there, and the planned Game 4 watch party was later canceled.
Madison Square Garden had requested a permit for a watch party for 500 to 999 fans, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the city approved it for 999 people. Dolan then decided to cancel it. Mamdani posted on X that, “Mr. Dolan has now decided to cancel the watch party,” before adding, “Knicks in five.” For fans trying to turn the playoffs into a street-level event, it meant one more thing vanished from the blocks around the arena: the crowd that had packed Games 1 and 2 never got a repeat, and the question now is whether Game 4 will belong to the team on the floor or to the bad vibes people outside say still hang over the Garden.
