There are A Closer Look segments that work well. There are segments that work brilliantly. And occasionally there is a segment that goes viral not just because the writing is sharp but because events conspire to make the host look like an actual prophet.
Seth Meyers had one of those moments this week. His Tuesday A Closer Look segment tackled Trump’s decision to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, and Meyers was not optimistic about how the reception was going to go.
Watch the full viral A Closer Look segment here:
https://youtu.be/Hk04uMl_jd8
To kick off the segment, Meyers shamed Trump for attending the game at all, begging him to just let us have this one thing without making it all about you. He then ran through Trump’s personal history of being booed at major sporting events. An NFL game. The FIFA World Cup. The US Open.
Meyers delivered the setup with deadpan precision: I mean, yikes, he got booed at tennis, soccer and football. You think Knicks fans are going to be more forgiving? He paused. Here is how forgiving Knicks fans are: in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals, they were booing the Knicks.
He then wondered aloud whether Trump even cares about basketball, noting that his only apparent connection to the sport is the similarity between his complexion and the surface of a basketball.
Then the game happened. During the national anthem at Game 3, Trump was loudly booed by the Madison Square Garden crowd. Not politely. Not ambiguously. Loudly booed.
Trump subsequently insisted publicly that he had heard cheers rather than boos, and doubled down on what Meyers described as deranged California election lies during the same post-game news cycle. That combination of denial and deflection gave Meyers a second wave of material in his next A Closer Look segment, which tackled Trump insisting he heard cheers and spreading lies that California elections were rigged.
The Knicks won the NBA championship and Karl-Anthony Towns told NBC’s late-night cameras this week that he has not slept since becoming an NBA champion, a quote that speaks to the emotional weight of New York’s first title in decades.
Meyers covered all of it. Every layer. With precision. With timing. And with the accurate advance prediction that made the whole sequence feel like something more than just commentary.
