Fans Think Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Is Cursing NBA Teams in the Playoffs

There will always be a woman to blame for the shortcomings of men, especially in this extremely superstitious league.

By Kylie Cheung | June 5, 2023 | 8:10pm

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Fans Think Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Is Cursing NBA Teams in the Playoffs

Photo:Natasha Moustache/TAS23,Matthew Stockman (Getty Images)

Proving there will always be a woman to blame for the shortcomings of men, a new NBA conspiracy theory just dropped: Fans are convinced Taylor Swift’s Eras tour is cursing NBA teams in the playoffs, and I’m fascinated by the accuracy of it thus far. The theory, laid out by ESPN’s Joe DeMartino on Sunday, posits that every city where Swift made (or will soon make) a stop on tour will be eliminated from the play-offs.

Phoenix was Swift’s first tour stop back in March; the Suns were eliminated in the second round. In May, Swift stopped in Philadelphia and then Boston. Both cities’ teams were also eliminated: The Celtics eliminated the Sixers, only to fall to the Miami Heat in the conference finals. The New York Knicks were also eliminated in the second round shortly before Swift’s stop in Rutherford, New Jersey. The Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers were knocked out in the Western conference semi-finals and finals, respectively, and Swift is set to make stops in San Francisco and Los Angeles later this summer.

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With the Miami Heat and Denver Nuggets the lone teams standing in the NBA Finals right now, it (could) all depend on where Swift is going next. She has a show lined up in Denver in mid-July, but nothing in Miami or the Miami area—just a stop in Tampa, which DeMartino determined is out of bounds for curse territory.

Following this—and I use this word very loosely—logic, some are betting Jimmy Butler and the Heat go all the way this year. That, in my opinion as a fan of Butler’s, would be a lovely and serendipitous outcome, considering Butler is a loud-and-proud Swift fan who’s famously said the singer “can do no wrong,” and complained that his teammates get annoyed when he plays her songs during warm-ups. I have no other choice but to believe that the famously shrewd and strategic Swift, who in 2021 graded Butler’s dance moves with a 13 out of 10, purposefully planned her tour schedule to win her favorite fan a chip.

Whether you subscribe to this particular bout of wild NBA fan speculation or not, you shouldn’t be surprised that this ominous pattern was noted: Superstition runs this league. There will always be NBA fans connecting the dots, like when fans pointed to Devin Booker’s attendance of both Chris Paul and Kevin Durant’s basketball camps during his childhood as ironclad evidence Durant would wind up a Phoenix Sun. (They were right!)

Another example: After the Sixers’ James Harden dropped 40+ points this playoff run in games where he showed up to the arena in the oddest outfits ever seen, fans theorized there was a direct correlation between the silliness of a Harden pre-game outfit and his level of performance.

NBA fans also love to jokingly (or not so jokingly) blame women for their faves losses. Most famously, there’s the “Kardashian Kurse,” a long-running conspiracy theory that posits that NBA players who date members of the KarJenner family are fated for the worst seasons of their lives, or perhaps even the downfall of their careers more broadly—a fate that’s recently befallen Ben Simmons, who dated Kendall Jenner for almost a year. Harden famously played the worst season of his career in 2015 whilst dating Khloé Kardashian. Last spring, while still dating Jenner, Booker’s Suns lost a Game 7 so pitifully that there exists a YouTube video infamously titled, “Chris Paul hits a huge 3 to cut the lead down to 42.”

Sure, these could all be coincidences. So, too, could this latest Eras tour theory. But the joy of being an NBA fan—if you, like me, exclusively adore teams and players that can’t win a championship to save their lives—comes in large part from the conspiracy theorist friends you make along the way.