The New York Knicks are on the brink of elimination from the NBA Playoffs and if you ask Boomer Esiason, the celebrity Knicks fans sitting courtside might be to blame.
The quarterback-turned-talk-radio-host unloaded on the stars, including Timothée Chalamet (once with girlfriend Kylie Jenner by his side), Spike Lee and Ben Stiller, who have been front and center throughout New York’s Eastern Conference Finals series against the Indiana Pacers.
“I think [the Knicks] are sick and tired of all the damn celebrities at home,” Esiason said on the air Tuesday before Game 4. “They’d rather get away from all that.”
The Knicks are just 3-5 at Madison Square Garden during the 2025 NBA Playoffs compared to 6-2 on the road. The star-studded distractions traveled to Indiana for Game 4, which the Knicks lost, 130-121.
ESPN’s Pat McAfee pumped up the partisan Pacers crowd before the game on Tuesday, shouting out each of the three, as they were met with a chorus of boos.
“We got some bigwigs from the big city in the building,” he yelled in a pregame message shown on the jumbotron. “Let’s send these sons of bitches back to New York with their ears ringing!Let’s turn this s*** up.”
Former Knick and current member of the Minnesota Timberwolves Julius Randle spoke about the pressures of playing on the New York stage in a story for Yahoo Sports published on Monday.
“It ain’t fun, it ain’t fun,” he said. “You can’t really focus on the game, you’re focused on everything else other than the game itself. You’re living and dying with every single shot, every single turnover, every single loss. It’s not a fun way to play.”
Knicks players know that it comes with the territory of playing in the biggest sports market in the country — and for a team that hasn’t won a championship since 1973. The celebrities courtside are nothing new, particularly Lee, 68, who has been a mainstay at MSG since the 1990s.
He was at the center of the action when the Knicks and Pacers met in the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals. As Pacers legend Reggie Miller was torching New York to the tune of 39 points in Game 5, Lee was heckling the future Hall of Famer. Toward the end of the game as Indiana pulled off a 12-point fourth quarter comeback, Miller made his now famous choke gesture at Lee.
Though he can’t say the same for his feelings about the Pacers, Lee says there’s no bad blood between him and Miller.
“That stuff is two-plus decades old,” he told the New York Post in a story published May 6. “There’s no rivalry between Reggie and I. It’s all love.”
Game 5 is scheduled for Thursday night in New York and it’s a safe bet that the stars will be out once again.
