Donald Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to attend an NBA finals game when he entered his suite at Madison Square Garden for Game 3 between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs.
And a whole lotta people tuned in to watch it.
According to viewership numbers shared by ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Trump-attended Game 3 matchup earned a whopping 26.3 million viewers at its peak and an average of 23.8 million, making it the most-watched Game 3 of any NBA Finals series since 1998.
Meaning, you would have to go back to Game 3 of Michael Jordan’s last championship season and his final season with the Chicago Bulls, to find a Finals series that drew more eyeballs than the game President Trump attended Monday night.
For those keeping score at home, that means President Trump has drawn better Game 3 numbers than any of the ten times that Communist China’s favorite player, LeBron James, has earned in his ten Game 3 appearances.
Just putting that out there, if you’re into tracking that kind of thing.
The president had said over a week before his appearance that he was planning to attend one of the Finals games at the invitation of Knicks Owner James Dolan, and he made good on that promise. And as the cameras caught the president in his suite during the anthem, he saluted.
Trump, a big Knicks fan, did not get to see his team win that night. However, New York still holds a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series and gets another crack at the visiting Spurs Wednesday night, with a chance to go up 3-1 before heading back to San Antonio.
Trump won’t be in attendance for Game 4. But wherever he is, he’ll be watching and rooting for his Knicks to win their first championship since 1973.