Last October, Mindaugas Kuzminskas received an invitation to meet with Dalia Grybauskaite, the president of Lithuania. Kuzminskas, the 27-year-old Lithuanian forward in his first season with the Knicks, assumed their meeting would come in a government building somewhere in Manhattan with security officers present. Instead, it took place on bleachers in Times Square.

Their conversation was wide-ranging, and Grybauskaite, who had previously lived in New York and Washington, offered Kuzminskas a perspective on the challenges of adapting to a new country, and a big city.

Grybauskaite then told Kuzminskas she was about to see the Broadway show “Cats.” It was going to be her fifth time seeing the play, her favorite.

The next day, Kuzminskas went to the TKTS booth beneath the bleachers where he met Grybauskaite and bought two tickets to “Cats’’ — for himself and his girlfriend, Egle Andreikaite. When they sat down in the theater, Kuzminskas was told by the man seated next to him that he was seeing the play for the 10th time.