A Knicks superfan with a résumé to prove it

Timothée Chalamet, the Academy Award-nominated actor, was particularly animated courtside at Madison Square Garden as the New York Knicks eliminated the Boston Celtics in their second-round series. He embraced Bad Bunny and posed for the cameras with director-actor Spike Lee, the self-appointed dean of Knicks fandom. (Reddit via r/Fauxmoi)

By Scott Cacciola

Timothée Chalamet, the Academy Award-nominated actor, has been impossible to miss during the New York Knicks’ feisty run through the NBA playoffs. A courtside staple at Madison Square Garden, Chalamet seemed to get nearly as much screen time as Jalen Brunson, the team’s star guard.

Chalamet, 29, was particularly animated as the Knicks eliminated the Boston Celtics in their second-round series. He embraced Bad Bunny. He dapped up Karl-Anthony Towns, the Knicks’ starting center. He posed for the cameras with Spike Lee, the self-appointed dean of Knicks fandom. He leaned out the window of an SUV last Friday to celebrate with other fans in the shadow of the Garden after the Knicks’ series-clinching win.

He even earned praise on the social platform X for getting Kylie and Kendall Jenner, both famous Angelenos, to cheer alongside him at the Garden, in a post that has been viewed more than 23 million times. (That he is dating Kylie undoubtedly helped win them over.)

A focus on celebrities at NBA games is nothing new. For years, the Knicks have pushed the concept of the Garden’s Celebrity Row — their answer to the star-studded floor seats at Los Angeles Lakers games. But while Jack Nicholson spent decades holding court at Lakers games, and Drake has been a sideline fixture for the Toronto Raptors, the Knicks of Chalamet’s childhood often filled out the floor seats with lower-rung celebrities and entertainers who just happened to be in town. And Lee, of course.

These days, Celebrity Row at the Garden delivers on its name. And in that group of A-listers, Chalamet has the fan credentials to hang with any of them.

Evidence of Chalamet’s long-standing loyalty is apparent in social media posts from November 2010, around the time that Chalamet, then 14, was attending LaGuardia High School in Manhattan. He was not yet a star. His breakout role in the Showtime series “Homeland” was a couple of years away.

But he was already familiar with the hardships borne of rooting for the Knicks, who were coming off nine consecutive losing seasons. Before the start of the 2010-11 season, the team got creative and announced a marketing campaign “You. Us. We. Now,” which was aimed at generating fan engagement.

The season was less than two weeks old when Andy Rautins and Landry Fields, two first-year players, had been recruited to take part in a ticket giveaway. On Twitter, Fields wrote: “Me & @andyrautins1 will be in the city tonight (starting at 5). The first person to find us and answer our trivia questions wins two tix!”

Less than two hours later, Fields returned to Twitter to announce that the tickets were gone. “Hahaha the contest is over,” Fields wrote. “Tim Chalamet is the winner. Found us at grand central. Congrats Tim! See you Friday at the game.”

Fields, whose account is now private, included a photo that featured Chalamet — very young, very happy and very anonymous — wearing a bright green puffer, his head cocked assuredly to the side with both hands throwing up peace signs as he stood between the players.

If Chalamet actually followed through and attended the game — representatives for the actor did not respond to a request for comment — he would have been treated to a 112-91 victory over the Washington Wizards that improved the Knicks’ record to 3-2. They proceeded to lose their next six games.

All things considered, the Knicks went on to have a decent season, at least by their standards at the time. After making a midseason trade for Carmelo Anthony, the team finished with a 42-40 record and secured a playoff berth, its first since 2004.

The Knicks have bigger goals this season. They are taking on the Indiana Pacers in the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals, which started Wednesday night at the Garden. Going into the conference title series, the team was four wins from reaching its first NBA Finals since 1999 — Chalamet was 3 at the time — and eight wins from its first championship since 1973.

It is unclear whether Chalamet will be in attendance at the conference finals. But it seems certain that he will follow along in one way or another. After all, he skipped the Met Gala this year, posting on Instagram Stories that he was watching the first game of the Knicks’ series against the Celtics on his iPad.

If he decides he does want to go, he will presumably take a seat on Celebrity Row with Lee and other A-list Knicks fans like Ben Stiller, Lenny Kravitz and Bad Bunny. And he won’t need to win a social media trivia contest to get there.