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Taylor Swift showed up to Game 4 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden on June 10 wearing a custom "Stevie Knicks" pun tee, flanked by the Haim sisters and Mariska Hargitay, cheering courtside as New York pulled off the largest comeback in Finals history.
The crowd went insane. Knicks radio analyst Monica McNutt was less thrilled.Caught on a live mic without realizing it, McNutt spotted Swift on celebrity row and said, "She's not a Knicks fan. Get out of here, girl." The clip hit social media within minutes. Swifties descended. By Thursday morning, McNutt was doing damage control on TMZ.
Monica McNutt apologized to Taylor Swift — but was she wrong? Decoding Swift's Knicks history
Speaking to TMZ, McNutt said she misspoke and didn't know about Swift's Knicks history.
She'd covered celebrity row all season for a piece and had never once seen Swift there. No Knicks gear, no prior appearances from McNutt's vantage point in the radio booth, Swift just looked like another celebrity using the Finals as a photo op.
She's since been corrected. McNutt acknowledged the Amar'e Stoudemire jersey, called it a fair point, and offered a peace offering: "Shoutout T-Swift. We can be united." Classic New Yorker apology, half sorry, half still right. She also noted that Travis Kelce cheers for the Cavaliers, so Swift's presence at a Knicks Finals game wasn't exactly an obvious call.
So is Taylor actually a Knicks fan?
Yes, and there are real receipts. Swift told TIME: "I performed at the Knicks' Kids Talent Competition at halftime when I was 12 or 13. And ever since then, I've had this kind of sparkly, magical opinion of Madison Square Garden and the Knicks, since they let me sing when I was a little kid." That's not a casual fan origin story. That's a whole emotional arc.
In 2014, she posed with Carmelo Anthony and Amar'e Stoudemire in a No.
13 Knicks jersey, her favourite number, and told TIME she loved the Knicks specifically because of her friendship with Stoudemire and his wife, whom she'd bond with at the Met Ball every year. That same season, she attended a Knicks-Bulls game with Karlie Kloss and a Knicks-Magic game where she sat celebrity row alongside Amanda Seyfried, Justin Long, Kate Upton and Justin Verlander.
Even Travis Kelce acknowledged it recently on New Heights: "Not a lot of teams have been able to get Taylor to wear a jersey, and the Knicks did. Tay's got a lot of New York ties."
The complication? That was her last MSG appearance 12 years ago. And just weeks before Game 4, she was courtside in Cleveland for the Eastern Conference Finals, watching the Knicks lose to Kelce's Cavaliers. Kelce called it a "fun date night," not a team switch. Sure.Swift is a Knicks fan, on record, in a jersey, with a childhood memory attached. But she's also been MIA from MSG for over a decade and just attended a game against her own team. McNutt was wrong about the facts. The spirit of the question? Completely fair.
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