Knicks cropped Ryan Blaney out of Bubba Wallace photo after telling him to get closer

Amidst the never-ending debate about how much networks and other media focus on Taylor Swift attending NFL games, a rather different story has emerged on a celebrity not being featured. That would be 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney, who attended the New York Knicks’ 118-103 home win over the Utah Jazz Tuesday alongside fellow driver Bubba Wallace. Blaney noted Wednesday morning that the Knicks’ Twitter/X account featured Wallace and not him, tweeting that with “Getting cropped out is some cold ****”:

https://twitter.com/Blaney/status/1752682186367537484

And Wallace noted that the photographer had even asked them to squeeze in closer together:

https://twitter.com/bubbawallace/status/1752696910605893859

Obviously, this isn’t a major crisis. Teams can choose to feature or not feature whoever they want on their social media platforms. And at least there wasn’t a misidentification here, which sometimes happens with fans in the crowd. And this is far from the worst crop we’ve seen recently. But it is still pretty funny to see the Knicks feature Wallace and not the 2023 Cup Series champion sitting right next to him.

There is perhaps an interesting larger thing here with different drivers’ levels of fame, though. In the new NASCAR: Full Speed docuseries from Connor Schell’s Words+Pictures and NASCAR Studios, Blaney is one of the nine featured drivers, but doesn’t get much of a focus until the third episode. Meanwhile, Wallace, who barely snuck into last year’s playoffs, is heavily featured throughout. (And that’s after he already received Facebook and Netflix series of his own, to say nothing of features in other projects such as Greatness Code, and he’s done all that despite declining some notable media requests.)

Wallace also has 447,000 Twitter/X followers to Blaney’s 334,000. So yeah, he’s probably the more famous one of the pair to a general audience. And it’s understandable why the Knicks wanted to promote him attending their game. But it is amusing to see Blaney cropped out this way and commenting on it publicly.

[Ryan Blaney on Twitter]