The bone-crushing incident went down at Madison Square Garden last May during the NBA Playoffs.

Martha Stewart confronts New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson for breaking her big toe: ‘It wasn’t okay at all’

The bone-crushing incident went down at Madison Square Garden last May during the NBA Playoffs.

By Kathleen Perricone

March 30, 2026 8:32 p.m. ET

Martha Stewart hashed it out with Jalen Brunson on his 'Roommates Show' podcast. Credit:

Roommates Show/Playmaker/YouTube (2)

It wasn’t a “very good thing” when Martha Stewart broke her big toe at a New York Knicks game last May.

The lifestyle guru was sitting courtside at Madison Square Garden when the home team’s point guard, Jalen Brunson, dove for a ball out of bounds — and “crashed” right into 84-year-old Stewart, who was wearing open-toe sandals.

As her big toe throbbed in pain, she knew immediately the 190-pound athlete had broken the bone.

Nearly a year later, she recently got the chance to confront Brunson on his podcast, *Roommates Show*, cohosted by his teammate Josh Hart.

The two-time NBA All-Star was deeply apologetic, although admitted he didn’t remember the moment, which went down as the Knicks squared off against the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals.

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As Stewart recounted, Brunson not only landed on her, he even sat on her lap.

“You jumped up really fast. And I remember saying to you, ‘It’s okay.’ You had no idea that you had hurt me. I didn’t say you hurt me, but I said, ‘It’s okay.’ It wasn’t okay at all.”

After the game — which went into overtime, much to her painful chagrin — Stewart headed straight to the Hospital for Special Surgery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to have her toe checked out.

“They’ve named it the ‘Stewart-Brunson fracture,’” she joked. “I have an X-ray, I’m going to leave you a picture of it... it was actually a break, so anyways, it’s better now… It took one year to heal.”

Martha Stewart sitting courtside at the game in question on May 21, 2025.

Sarah Stier/Getty

Stewart previously told the story on *The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon*, and revealed she actually ran into the NBA star’s parents, Knicks assistant coach Rick Brunson and his wife Sandra, in the Hamptons. And she couldn’t help but tell them what their son did. “They were laughing,” she told Fallon. “They thought it was so funny.”

Brunson now adds a little more to the story: His dad FaceTimed him to virtually apologize to Stewart. He later also sent her a basketball, which she gave to her grandson.

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In the end, there’s no bad blood — and Stewart learned a valuable lesson.

“It’s my fault for wearing open-toe shoes to a basketball game,” she reasoned. “I look back at it as just something silly, stupid, and funny. It was stupid of me.”

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