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With the Trump Stench Gone, the Knicks Make History

The bad vibes lifted, and basketball fans witnessed a miracle at Madison Square Garden.

A general view inside Madison Square Garden as the New York Knicks celebrate their 107–106 victory against the San Antonio Spurs in Game Four of the 2026 NBA Finals on June 10, 2026 in New York City.

Before Wednesday night’s NBA Finals game between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, one fan burned sage outside of New York City’s Madison Square Garden. He was performing this ancient rite to remove the sulfuric stench and potentially season-wrecking bad vibes caused by President Donald Trump’s deeply unwanted and very sleepy presence at Monday night’s Game 3 of the best of seven series.

For the first half of Game 4, it looked like the cleansing ritual was in vain. The odious Trump odor was still in the air, as the Knicks went down by 29 points in the third quarter. The stank was real, less because of the repugnant memory of him smirking and saluting as the boos rained down upon him during the national anthem, but more so because the New York City police insisted upon keeping up the Trump security fence that has turned the area around Madison Square Garden into a dystopian police state. Even without the president there, it took hours to enter the arena, bags were banned, and a TSA style rub-down was required before entry.

Folks may understandably not weep for the finance and celebrity class who could afford the tickets, but the Knicks’ grotesquerie of an owner, James Dolan, also canceled the watch parties outside MSG that had electrified the city. The landscape outside the arena would be barren: from a showcase of unbridled humanity to a postapocalyptic wasteland. Dolan’s decision was only announced a few hours before the game and led to a public spat between Dolan and Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Again, the focus before tip-off was on so many things that had nothing to do with........

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