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? 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. That said, I’m curious about what was going through Timmy’s head when he picked out his outfit for the game. Was he at all worried about what people might think if he wore something Lakers-adjacent—and if so, did he choose the Kobe shirt because it’s relatively neutral? Did he throw on the Timbs to assert that he does, in fact, know where he came from? Did he opt for a T-shirt with a grayscale graphic to better compliment his black-and-white tweed Chanel jacket? I feel moved by this sort of sartorial tension. In this scenario, what would be your courtside-fit strategy? MR: If I’m hitting the Chalamet—double dipping with my favorite team and then a team I don’t really care about—I think I’d approach it similarly. But if I was in that situation, a guy like me is dusting off my best throwback jersey for the Knicks portion. Someone overnight this man a Jamal Crawford jersey with the wild blue and orange trim. You want to wear something that shows you know ball, and there’s no better way to do that than with a niche uniform that the team doesn’t wear anymore, especially if the name on the back is more of a cult hero than a household name. For the LA game, I’d probably go with something that shows no allegiance or affiliation at all. A plain white T-shirt, perhaps, would be my move underneath the outer layer. If, in this hypothetical situation, I’m Timotheé Chalamet and I’m forced to wear a shirt that pays tribute to a former Laker, I’d use my Hollywood connections to find a shirt depicting Mark Madsen's dance moves from the 2001 championship parade. EC: As a documented proponent of Eric Adams’s Mets-Yankees hat, I would have gone to a local mall and had a Knicks-Lakers tee made at one of those screenprinting kiosks. But I also appreciate the move of wearing local merch to a local game. If I’m at a Knicks game, I’m channeling Chloë Sevigny and Pauly D. If I’m at a Lakers game, maybe I’d go Flea mode. All told, how do we feel about Timothée’s recent courtside fits? MR: I really am not a fan of these performance-style hoodies that the players wear on the bench—and it looks even weirder on Chalamet in the stands. The hood is too tight. It looks constricting, but maybe that’s the point for an A-list movie star who wants to watch noted Dune appreciator Deuce McBride unbothered. I also wonder about how much peripheral vision the hood allows when deployed. I guess that could add to the locked-in factor, not unlike a horse wearing blinders. A real Knicks fan flies to Detroit to watch his team; a diehard Knicks fan throws on the distraction-free sweatshirt. As for the Kobe fit…sure. Chalamet’s style is not the route I would go if I was a super rich guy, but there’s nothing wrong with this outfit. The peanut-butter Timbs are a nice homage to his home city, and the light jacket looks like a sensible choice. EC: Sitting courtside at a basketball game is Timmy’s natural habitat; it’s where he really lets his post-swag flag fly. Combine some combination of unusual designer grails, personality-forward hats, and swagged-out footwear in a glass and mix. In LA, the Chanel jacket made sense given Timmy’s proximity to the brand—he’s the face of its men’s fragrance, Bleu de Chanel, and wore plenty of double Cs on his recent press tour for A Complete Unknown. In Detroit, the polyester Knicks hoodie made sense given his general taste for weird sportswear. Is Timmy’s fandom polygamy the reason the Lakers lost? MR: I think that probably has more to do with their head coach, JJ Redick, being one year removed from podcasting, and having way too much dip on his chip. Timotheé Chalamet had no impact on the Lakers getting out-rebounded 54-37, no say on keeping their tallest player (Jaxson Hayes) inexplicably glued to the bench while Rudy Gobert had his best playoff game ever. If you let Rudy Gobert go off, there’s umpteen internal issues, none of which are impacted by the guy from Call Me By Your Name being there. EC: This question is above my paygrade. Congrats to all winners, apologies to all losers! Who is going to win the NBA championship, and how will Timmy and Kylie factor in? MR: As much as it pains me to say—because I naturally reject the idea of Boston sports as an institution—I’d still probably go with the Celtics. Maybe Kylie and Timmy will get flewed out to Beantown by the Wahlbergs. EC: See above RE: my paygrade. But I’d love to see what Timmy and Kylie would wear to a Finals game in Boston. In my dream scenario, they’d do a full Boston homage: Kylie cosplaying as Blake Lively’s character in The Town, and Timmy going full bore in costume as Lucky the Leprechaun, the Celtics’ mascot.