The Knicks owner went on “The Carton Show” to shut down the viral clip, insisting he and Trump talked the entire game, days after Stephen A. Smith said the exact opposite. James Dolan wants the record set straight. The New York Knicks owner went on WFAN’s The Carton Show on Wednesday and flatly denied that Donald Trump fell asleep during Game 3 of the NBA Finals, brushing off the viral footage that had the internet roasting his friend all week.
According to James Dolan, who sat right next to Trump in the box at Madison Square Garden, the nap that everyone thinks they saw simply never happened. “I was with him the whole time,” Dolan said. “We were talking the whole time. He was very much awake, he was very much engaged.”
The controversy kicked off Monday night, when the Knicks hosted their first home Finals game in 27 years and Trump showed up courtside as Dolan’s guest. At some point during the action, a clip began circulating that appeared to show Trump with his eyes closed and his head drooping for the better part of a minute. The internet did what the internet does, and within hours the 79 year old was being accused of dozing off during one of the biggest sports nights New York has seen in decades. James Dolan, watching all of this unfold, decided he had heard enough.
It did not help that the loudest voice pushing the sleeping narrative belonged to Stephen A. Smith, who used his platform on “First Take” to ask why Trump bothered showing up if he was just going to nod off in his seat. So when James Dolan got his turn on the radio, he was not just defending a friend. He was stepping directly into one of the hottest arguments in the country.
Dolan did not hold back. “Where do they get this?” he asked Craig Carton, sounding genuinely puzzled by the whole thing. He doubled down that the two of them were in conversation the entire night, even joking that if Trump looked like he was talking in his sleep, it was only because he was wide awake and chatting the whole time. The way James Dolan tells it, there was no drowsiness in that box at all, just two longtime friends going back and forth about the game in front of them.
That friendship is a big part of why James Dolan was so willing to go to bat here. He made it clear he has known Trump for more than 30 years, going all the way back to Trump’s days as a New York real estate name, and he did not hide his personal affection, calling him a great guy. At the same time, Dolan was careful to say he was not there to campaign for anybody or turn a sports interview into a political rally. He just wanted to make the point that having Trump at the Garden was a genuine honor and that he enjoyed the company. The two reportedly spent the night talking basketball, and Dolan insisted Trump actually knows the game.
Of course, the optics around the visit were messy no matter what James Dolan says now. Trump was loudly booed when his face hit the big screen during the national anthem. Security was so heavy that even the Knicks and Spurs players had to go through TSA style screening just to get into their own arena, and fans were told to show up two hours early and leave their bags at home. Then the Knicks went out and lost 115 to 111, cutting their series lead to 2 to 1, and plenty of fans were more than happy to pin the loss on the guest of honor. By the time the dust settled, Trump’s attendance had become a bigger story than the basketball, and he is not expected back for Game 4.
None of that changes the simple thing James Dolan came on the radio to say. In his telling, the man sitting next to him was locked in, asking questions, and following the action the entire night. The video that went viral tells a slightly different story, and anyone who has seen it can judge for themselves how those 45 seconds looked. But the only person who was actually in that box, shoulder to shoulder with Trump for the whole game, says the sleeping story is a myth. Whether the public buys it is another question entirely.
What is not in dispute is that James Dolan picked a side and said it out loud. He invited Trump, he sat with Trump, and now he is vouching for Trump while the rest of the sports world keeps replaying the clip in slow motion. For a feud that started over a basketball game, the guest list just got one more very powerful name willing to go on the record. The Knicks may have lost Game 3, but the argument over what happened in that suite is nowhere close to over.
