Martha Stewart Says Her Broken Toe at a Knicks Playoff Game Took One Year to Heal
Picture this: Martha Stewart — 84 years old, decked out in open-toe sandals and sitting courtside at Madison Square Garden — gets her big toe crushed by an NBA player mid-game.
Now imagine her waiting an entire year to confront him about it on his own podcast. That’s exactly what happened, and honestly, it’s the celebrity crossover moment we didn’t know we needed.
On March 26, Stewart appeared on an episode of the Roommates Show podcast, co-hosted by New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson and his teammate Josh Hart. And yes, she brought receipts.
The Confrontation We’ve Been Waiting For
During the episode, the trio watched a clip from Stewart’s 2025 appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where she first publicly told the story of Brunson accidentally breaking her toe during a game.
Seeing herself recount the tale on-screen, Stewart turned to Brunson and finally gave him the full picture — directly to his face.
“You jumped up really fast. And I remember saying to you, ‘It’s okay,’” she said on the podcast. “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.”
Read that again. Stewart politely told a 6-foot-2, 190-pound professional basketball player “It’s okay” while silently knowing her toe was broken. Icon behavior.
And Brunson? He was apologetic — but admitted he didn’t even remember the incident. Which, honestly, only makes the whole thing funnier.
The Invention of the ‘Stewart-Brunson Fracture’
Stewart didn’t just come to air grievances. She came armed with a joke that might be her best one yet.
“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.”
A full year. She told Brunson it took a full year for her toe to recover. And she revealed that she plans to leave him a copy of the X-ray, presumably as a souvenir of their little courtside collision.
Stewart also took responsibility in the most Martha Stewart way possible.
“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.”
How Exactly Did Martha Stewart Break Her Toe?
The original incident happened last May at Madison Square Garden during a Knicks vs. Indiana Pacers Eastern Conference Finals matchup.
Stewart was sitting courtside in open-toe sandals when Brunson stepped on her toe while running up the court and also dove for a ball out of bounds, crashing into her and briefly sitting on her lap.
Stewart knew immediately that her toe was broken. Making matters worse, the game went into overtime, meaning she couldn’t leave right away.
After the game, she went directly to the Hospital for Special Surgery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The story didn’t end at the hospital. Stewart later ran into Brunson’s parents — Knicks assistant coach Rick Brunson and his wife Sandra — in the Hamptons and told them what happened. Their reaction? They found it funny.
Brunson’s father later FaceTimed his son to virtually apologize to Stewart. Brunson also sent her a signed basketball, which she promptly gave to her grandson.
At the time of her Tonight Show appearance in December, Stewart was still wearing open-toe shoes — not as a fashion choice, but because they were the only ones she could comfortably wear while her toe healed.
From courtside collision to podcast confrontation, the entire saga is peak Martha Stewart: gracious in the moment, hilarious in the retelling and absolutely unbothered about turning a broken toe into a legendary bit.
The “Stewart-Brunson fracture” deserves its own Wikipedia page at this point.
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
