Does Timotheé Chalamet’s Kobe T-Shirt Mean He’s Cheating on the Knicks?

We don’t need to tell you twice that Timotheé Chalamet loves his New York Knicks. But it can’t be easy for Timmy, as a native Manhattanite and longtime basketball fan, to navigate the tension of a bicoastal romance. Chalamet’s girlfriend, Kylie Jenner, has lived in Los Angeles her whole life, and her family has a longstanding allegiance to the Los Angeles Lakers. He’s a fixture of Madison Square Garden’s Celebrity Row; she’s been known to sit courtside at the ol’ Crypto.com Arena.

And Chalamet, being the famous person and documented hoops enjoyer that he is, has been all over these NBA playoffs as of late. Last week, the moptopped actor ventured to Detroit for Game 3 of the Knicks’ series against the Pistons, digesting New York’s hard-fought win alongside fellow superfan Ben Stiller.

As a highly connected Knicks fan with a love of Being Outside, it’s not surprising to see Timmy pop up in the Midwest to cheer on his guys. But then, on Wednesday night in Los Angeles, there he was again, ostensibly supporting the Lakers. That raised some eyebrows. People (read, the GQ office) debated: Is it acceptable to have such a big part of one’s identity tied to the Knickerbockers, and then turn around and sit courtside in LA wearing a Lakers shirt?

Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner at the Lakers-Timberwolves game in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images

The ensemble he wore to the Lakers’ Game 5 loss was perfectly bicoastal. The Kobe Bryant T-shirt nodded to LA, but his loose, untied Timberlands were NYC as hell. Atop it all, a pearl-festooned tweed jacket from Chanel’s womenswear line. But the outfit isn’t nearly as controversial as his two-timing fandom. Sure, he was almost certainly just there because he’s a big-name actor dating one of the city’s most prominent starlets, not because he wanted to analyze the Lakers’ defensive rotations up close. But we still had some questions about this whole ordeal, mainly the morality of treating the Knicks like a wife and the Lakers as a mistress.

In light of Chalamet’s potential fan faux pas, GQ staff writers Matthew Roberson and Eileen Cartter—who previously debated the merits of Eric Adams’s Mets-Yankees hat—put their heads together to decipher exactly what’s going on here.

First off: Is it cool for Chalamet to openly rep two different teams?

Matthew Roberson: Usually I would say no, but in this particular case—a well-documented Knicks fan going to a basketball game in the other city where he also spends a lot of time—I think it’s fine. If Timmy had gone to Denver for Game 5 of Nuggets-Clippers, let’s say, and was wearing a Nikola Jokić jersey, I’d be looking more askance. But a Kobe shirt at a Lakers game doesn’t tell me that he’s cheating on the Knicks; it just tells me he went to a Lakers game. A Kobe jersey, meanwhile, would be doing too much. Something tells me he went through these exact same machinations as well, maybe even debating whether to go with #8 or #24, before settling on the T-shirt.

Eileen Cartter: Even as a low-lift Knicks fan myself, I’m inclined to agree. When in Rome! Not to mention, Timothée is very much of the Kobe generation. Despite loving the Knicks, he would probably agree that Kobe is the GOAT.