UMVA has learned that New York Governor Kathy Hochul stumbled spectacularly when she tried to stump former President Donald Trump on his beloved New York Knicks fandom during a recent press conference.
When reporters mentioned a report that Trump, a lifelong Knicks enthusiast, might attend an NBA Finals game at Madison Square Garden, Hochul quipped she would “ask him to name the starting lineup from the 1993 championship team and see how he does.”
Basketball purists were quick to point out the fatal flaw: the Knicks have not hoisted an NBA title since 1973, when Walt Frazier and Willis Reed led the franchise to victory over the Los Angeles Lakers.
In reality, the 1993 Knicks fell in the Eastern Conference finals to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, and the franchise’s only championships arrived in 1970 and 1973, making Hochul’s reference a glaring historical miss.
The misfire came on the heels of Trump’s own boast that Knicks owner James Dolan had invited him to watch the NBA Finals, praising the Eastern Conference champions and expressing his excitement to see the game in person.
Social‑media users erupted, sharing clips of Hochul’s stumble and flooding the internet with memes that highlighted the Knicks’ true championship years, while dubbing her comment an “airball” on a simple trivia test.
Even Trump’s son weighed in, asserting that anyone who knows his father understands he “probably knows more about sports than just about any human being not in the business,” turning the governor’s soundbite into a viral punchline.
