Timothée Chalamet Is the King of the Courtside Watch

No one is enjoying this New York Knicks playoff run more than Timothée Chalamet. The actor has been flying out to Indiana to see road games, celebrating with fans after wins, and wearing some of the most enormous courtside fits we’ve seen since Jack Nicholson was sitting on the hardwood for the Showtime Lakers. In addition to the custom Chrome Hearts gear, the wristwear has been an essential element to Timmy’s looks.

We are ready to crown Chalamet as the King of the Courtside Watch for his commitment to bringing unusual watches to Madison Square Garden. See: Chalamet in Tank à Guichet. (Rhyme scheme: unintentional yet delightful.) Chalamet in Ballon Bleu de Cartier. (Not technically courtside but close enough.) Chalamet in steel Panthère. Needless to say, the list goes on. This series against the Indiana Pacers has provided two more points of overwhelming evidence. Chalamet delivered the first during game two while rocking a diamond-studded Baignoire Allongée.

For those unfamiliar, the Baignoire (Français for “bathtub”) is an oval-shaped dress watch with the classic Cartier Roman numeral dial and blued steel handset. The Allongée version is somewhat more akin to other elongated Cartier models in which the “stretched” case results in warped dial typography. Chalamet’s watch, which appears to be the 21mm x 47mm white gold reference powered by the cal. 1917 manually-wound movement, is what would traditionally be thought of as a ladies’ cocktail watch. These days, of course, the gender lines are fully blurred, with celebrities adopting whatever silhouette suits their fancy, and smaller watches abounding on the menswear circuit. It’s no coincidence that Chalamet has been a major part of this movement.

And this isn’t the only high-falutin Cartier we’ve spotted as part of Chalamet’s courtside fits lately. Chalamet’s turned to a gem-set Tank Américaine in 18K white gold with diamonds twice during this series. This version of the Tank was launched in 1989 as a larger, quartz-powered riff on the famously curved Tank Cintrée. The Américaine has since morphed into a large collection of elongated watches in various sizes and configurations. Chalamet’s, with diamonds and a matching, diamond-studded bracelet, is a small execution with a quartz movement.

What to make of all this? More and more, brands are using their ambassadors as subtle (yet omnipresent) billboards for their most important models and pending new releases. While we haven’t seen Cartier pull any Omega- or Breitling-type sneak peaks just yet, the French firm does regularly outfit its star ambassador with wildly cool (and often rare) pieces, the likes of which one simply doesn’t see outside of gatherings of the horological cognoscenti in major metropolitan areas. Tank Louis? All day long at any proper country club wedding. Gem-set Baignoire? Not so much.

What’s certain is that no man hath Swiss-made clout like Chalamet doth present when pressed against the baselines.

Roger Federer’s Rolex Land-Dweller

A touching scene at Roland Garros saw two GOATS in mid-embrace: Roger Federer gave Rafael Nadal a hug and also gave us watch nerds a glimpse of his Rolex Land-Dweller 40 in Oystersteel and white gold. Released at Watches and Wonders 2025, the Land-Dweller is the Crown’s modern luxury sports watch with an integrated bracelet. Following in the footsteps of the Crown’s Oysterquartz models from the 1970s and 1980s, it features a newly designed automatic cal. 7135 movement, a cool honeycomb-motif dial cut with a femtosecond laser—that’s one quadrillionth of a second according to a Google search—and a fluted bezel in the manner of classic Datejust models. At roughly $15K, it’s also one of the most affordable Land-Dweller references.

Tom Cruise’s Rolex GMT-Master II

Appearing at an event promoting Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning in Texas, Tom Cruise’s Rolex bona fides were on full view. On the IMF agent’s left wrist was the GMT-Master II ref. 126719BLRO, a white gold execution of the famous travel watch with a blue and red “Pepsi” bezel and a matching white gold Jubilee bracelet. A dual-time GMT timepiece makes sense for a globe-trotting, perpetually wronged government agent trying to stave off the ever-present threat of doom at the hands of powerful supervillains…but it’s also just a really cool watch. Regularly on view at any corner office on Wall Street, it was also the provenance of bebop pioneer Dizzy Gillespie, test pilot Chuck Yeager, and rock n’ roll god Bruce Springsteen.

Patrick Dempsey’s TAG Heuer Monaco Chronograph X Gulf

Actor, race car driver, and all-around cool dude Patrick Dempsey made an appearance at Oracle Red Bull Racing’s garage during F1 Grand Prix of Monaco this week wearing a spiffy new TAG Heuer. The Monaco Chronograph X Gulf takes the Swiss brand’s famous square-cased, automatic chronograph from the late ‘60s and gives it a white-blue-and-orange livery in honor of Gulf, a longtime racing partner of both Heuer and TAG Heuer. While previous editions in steel have maintained the watch’s well-known blue dial, this execution—housed in a 39mm titanium case—matches the striped white dial to a white fabric strap with orange top stitching. Of course, it’s still powered by the Calibre 11, one of the original crop of automatic chronograph movements from 1969. Most impressively, TAG tracked down the suppliers who made the suit for McQueen for Le Mans and had them make the straps out of the very same material the actor wore in the movie.

Ben Stiller’s Panerai Luminor GMT 10 Days ref. PAM00335

Momentarily carried into a frenzy as the Knicks took the upper hand last night at the Garden, Ben Stiller’s Panerai Luminor GMT 10 Days ref. PAM00335 was in full view. The spiritual opposite of courtside pal Chalamet’s gem-set Américaine from Game Four, the 44-mm black ceramic Luminor is based upon the Italian-founded brand’s military dive watch roots—look closely and you’ll see the (now vestigial) crown protection device for ensuring water resistance, plus the famous luminous “sandwich” dial construction. This version is particularly notable for its all-black construction, GMT complication, and 10-day power reserve, all of which makes it an excellent travel watch.