When you love something so much and that adoration goes unrequited for more than a half a century until you suddenly receive a big, beautiful kiss, you’re bound to lose yourself. Hug a stranger. Shed a tear. 

This New York Knicks championship, the first since 1973, clinched on June 13 in a 94-90 victory over the San Antonio Spurs, means everything to New Yorkers because we play this game, hoops, everywhere. On Parks Department courts, concrete cracked, rims crooked or tighter than the 5 p.m. subway or both, in community centers, and in Catholic grammar-school gyms with kitchen-tile floors and pillars in weird places, such as inbounds. The young don their first tiny jerseys, likely Knicks kits, for rec ball. The graying wrap their knees in thick white pads, still chasing Saturday-morning glory at 70. And when people from all over the United States and the world relocate here to pursue their passions, they may just join a hoops team, in the New York Urban Professionals League or the co-ed ZogSports operation, playing in some public-school fifth-floor gym or at a collection of courts near the South Street Seaport called Basketball City.

Play. The word just sounds happy. You play it, you breathe it, you live it, you love it. So you ache when your team stinks. But when all’s clicking in your basketball relationship, and you’re living among 8.5 million people, a vibe spreads, as if it were a joy germ, among friends, family, neighbors, courtside celebrities. Even those who never pick up a ball catch Knicks fever. And so Knicks fans, bright-eyed and new and long-suffering alike, gathered in Central Park and Queens pubs and Bronx bodegas, a sea of orange and blue, to shout so loud you could hear them from surrounding high-rises. The amount of Knicks gear seen on the streets jumped exponentially, as did the temptation to say “let’s go Knicks” to passersby. In a city where residents battle over borough supremacy, bagel orders, and parking spots, suddenly everyone was on the same team. 

We stuck with the Knicks through all the disappointment, and they in turn stuck with the Cleveland Cavaliers when New York was down 22 points in the fourth quarter of the Eastern Conference Finals opener, and with the Spurs when down by nearly 30 in Game 4. This squad represented us so well, because we too don’t let messiness—of, say, cramped space or vermin or astronomical rents—knock us out. We take the lumps of a sweltering train stranded under the East River, and like these Knicks, come out on the other side, knowing that with New York’s nightlife and the culture and history, and the absurdity of toiling amid the skyscrapers and scariness, this is the life for you. 

This team isn’t just ours. At a watch party in Los Angeles, where I’m based for a few weeks covering the World Cup, New York transplants embraced each other and screamed “Ja-Len Brunson” and “Let’s Go Knicks” during Game 5. Even the most parochial of New Yorkers—not for nothin’, I’m never leaving Morris Park but—should celebrate their widespread appeal. What a team to export to the world. Because the core reason for watching sports is the promise, however faint, of witnessing some accomplishment, on any given night, that no eyes have ever before seen. 

In Game 4 of the 2026 NBA Finals, New York looked cooked. After winning 13 straight games in the postseason, the second longest streak in playoff history, they were up 2-1 in the series, but the Spurs, featuring 7-ft. 4-in. phenomenon Victor Wembanyama, had a 71-42 lead near the end of the first half. Still, New York kept chipping, chipping away, before the last two and a half minutes of a game that will be savored, dissected, and, take it to the bank, the subject of books and documentaries. (Ben Stiller is reportedly shooting one, on his phone, for HBO.) 

First, Jalen Brunson, the 6-ft. 2-in. Knicks point guard with an always-unfazed expression, buried a 26-ft. three-pointer in Wembanyama’s face to cut the deficit to one, 104-103. Incredible. Then Josh Hart stole a pass but blew his chance to give the Knicks their first lead of the night when he couldn’t decide whether to dunk it or lay it in. The potential all-time blunder almost sent Larry David, who was courtside with Jerry Seinfeld, Taylor Swift, and the usual diehards (Stiller, Spike Lee, Timothée Chalamet, Tracy Morgan, Mariska Hargitay, et. al), into cardiac arrest. 

Hart caught a break when Wemby, usually so silky at the foul line, missed a pair. Then a floater by—who else?—the eminently clutch Brunson finally put New York ahead. After the Spurs went back up, 106-105, on a pair of Stephon Castle free throws, and Brunson missed with under 20 seconds left, Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox brilliantly tapped a loose ball to himself, then not-so-brilliantly drove for a layup rather than trying to dribble out the clock only to have OG Anunoby block the shot. With four seconds on the clock, Brunson launched a 30-footer over Wemby, an absolutely bonkers decision, had he not proven, over and over again, his ability to do unimaginable things on the court. The gall of that guy. He missed, but Anunoby came flying in for the winning tip. “The Right Hand of God,” Knicks All-Star forward Karl-Anthony Towns said afterward. Spectators lingered long after the final buzzer, still in shock, refusing to leave a euphoric scene. 

It was, to steal a phrase from the understated Anunoby, “really cool.”

Fans love the Knicks, but especially these Knicks. New York’s starters form a cohesive five. Three of them, Brunson, Hart, and Mikal Bridges, went to the same college, Villanova, Pope Leo’s alma mater, where Hart won an NCAA title and Brunson and Bridges won two. “My mayor’s still Muslim!” a fan shouted after the Game 4 win. “My bagel’s still Jewish! The Pope’s on our side, Knicks in five!!!” Brunson, the series MVP who scored 45 points in the clincher, and Hart have taken their buddy act to a podcast, Roommates Show, where they talk shop and needle each other. Brunson, whose father Rick was on the Knicks during their 1999 Finals run and is now an assistant coach with the team, is a stand-in for the outer-borough striver, underestimated at first glance, but blessed with moxie. The second-team All-NBA player is not particularly fast or athletic—how does he dribble, dribble, go one way, spin the other way, take a ridiculous fadeaway at an awful angle, and sink it anyhow? Towns, imported from Minnesota, via trade, before the 2024-2025 season, has lived up to his elite rep: his shotmaking early in the series and effort to stop Wembanyama—fans have given KAT flack for his D—were crucial. He’s also the local, a Knicks fan from central New Jersey, striving to raise a trophy for his late mother, who passed away of COVID complications in 2020, and hugging his dad, a regular presence at both home and away games. 

Anunoby, a second-team All-Defense selection this season, is the firehouse hero—he dropped 33 points in Game 4, to go along with Brunson’s 36. Hart is the heart, the muscle, the 3-points, 15-rebounds, 6-assists, 4-steals guy—that’s his actual stat line in the Game 1 Finals victory—unafraid to bang the timely three–pointer when the opposition is begging him to fire away. Bridges, also brought in before 2024-25, could frustrate Knicks supporters, mostly because team president Leon Rose mortgaged the future on him. Rose gave up five first-round draft picks to acquire the versatile wing from the Brooklyn Nets. Expectations were impossible for Bridges, but all chirping is behind us, as he went on a postseason efficiency bender. Over one eight-game stretch—encompassing the final first-round game against Atlanta, the four-game sweep of Philadelphia, and the first three conference finals wins over Cleveland, Bridges shot 69% from the field. That’s no clerical error. I triple-checked the math.  

But stats undersell why the Knicks are so uniting. They have no heels. Though they’re a big-market team with the second-highest payroll in the NBA, they fight like underdogs. They don’t feature a player considered a super-duper star, a Wemby, LeBron, Steph, Giannis, SGA, KD, Luka, Nikola Jokic, but still went all the way. They pull out games that, analytically speaking, should go to the other team. In all four of their wins during the Finals, the Knicks trailed by double digits. “We don’t show up at 8:30 — we show up at 9 o’clock," Brunson said after the title win.

The team has embraced the city: Towns has talked with pride about representing the Dominican Republic, his mother’s country, and its sizable diaspora in New York City. The Puerto Rican community has shaped the city’s music, art, and culinary culture for decades: reserve guard Jose Alvarado, an undersized defensive specialist born and raised here, celebrates his Puerto Rican roots.

The Knicks have formed a true brotherhood. Hart pointed to how, after he missed that Game 4 layup, a potentially devastating event, Brunson, KAT, and Alvarado all ran over to him to lift his spirits. “When you have a team that has that kind of togetherness in the most adverse situations, that breeds championship habits,” Hart said. Players up and down the roster stepped up. Journeyman Landry Shamet, for example, was given a final roster spot last season, when nobody in the league wanted him. Shamet dislocated a shoulder, rehabbed in the G League, and provided timely bench play throughout the playoffs: his game-tying three-pointer in the final minute of the comeback against Cleveland, which bounced off the rim and, in defiance of physics, fell through the net, was a defining moment of this magical run. 

Such performances delighted, in particular, the team’s devoted alumni base: at times, John Starks, the pugnacious ‘90s sharpshooter, appeared ready to charge a ref from the Madison Square Garden sideline, like a dad at the Gauchos Gym. (Look it up, folks. Our chip, our references.) Graying Larry Johnson, who hit a legendary four-point shot in the 1999 playoffs, leading an eight-seed to the Finals for the first and only time, is often in the house, as is Patrick Ewing, the franchise’s all-time leading scorer, in his working-class cap. Walt “Clyde” Frazier is stylin’ and profilin’ at 81, looking at least a decade younger; Bernard King, the ‘80s scoring machine, waves to the camera in a fedora. They’re our favorite uncles, always welcome back. Only Frazier, the Hall of Fame point guard, brought us championships, in 1970 and 1973, before most of us were born. But so what? They played.  

After that ‘73 title, New York and the Knicks entered a dark age. President Gerald Ford, no Brunson, refused an assist: after he wouldn’t help the city get through its fiscal crisis in 1975, the Daily News declared that Ford told us to “Drop Dead.” At the Garden, the team made a garish uniform color-scheme switch in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, from classic Knicks orange to maroon. On the front of these jerseys, a player’s number appeared above the “Knicks” name, which just looked weird. That’s the standout memory of that era. 

Then King, the Brooklyn native, came home in 1982 and sparked a short revival: his quick-release shot, which he launched while spinning on the baseline and elsewhere, was unstoppable. As a 7-year-old, I’d entertain my father’s friends, at their weekly pickup game at a Bronx barn-house gymnasium, by imitating his game face—bottom lip jutting, eyes scowling. I nearly named my firstborn Bernard.  

But King tore his ACL in ‘85, the season he led the NBA in scoring, and while the Knicks won the first-ever NBA draft lottery that year and took Ewing out of Georgetown as the top prize, the big fella needed a few seasons to get healthy and established. Those mid-’80s years, so crucial to a 10-year-old kid forming his fandom, were fallow. But Bob Thornton, Fred Cofield, Ken “The Animal” Bannister: you are not forgotten. This title’s for you too. 

Under coach Pat Riley, who arrived in 1991 after guiding the “Showtime” Los Angeles Lakers to four championships, Ewing came close to delivering on his promise, in ‘94. But Starks shot them out of Game 7, against the Rockets, in that year’s Finals: his 2-for-18 night in Houston, like Bill Buckner’s error and Steve Bartman’s Wrigley Field interference, is now absolved. Johnson, Latrell Sprewell, Alan Houston, and the Knicks ‘99ers never really stood a chance against San Antonio’s Hall of Fame front line, David Robinson and Tim Duncan, in those Finals. 

The current Knicks owner, James Dolan, began running the franchise around that time, after his father’s media company, Cablevision, bought the team. The next two decades were mostly disastrous. There were a few bright spots, like the rise of Jeremy Lin from random Harvard point guard to the star of Linsanity. Carmelo Anthony’s scoring punch propelled the Knicks to a 54-win season, and the second round, in 2013. But this century was mostly marked by 17 losing campaigns. New Yorkers loathed Dolan, who was seen as a nepo hire more concerned about fronting his blues rock band, JD & The Straight Shot, than developing a winning culture. He even feuded with Charles Oakley, the beloved bruiser from the Ewing era, banning him from Madison Square Garden for a time. Guess who Knicks Nation sided with? 

But through all embarrassments, fans still flocked to the Garden. In 2015, the team was so lousy the New York Times reassigned its Knicks beat writer, Scott Cacciola, to cover games anywhere but New York. The paper sent him to New Zealand for a piece on a pro team there; to Springfield, Ill., for a feature about a fifth-grade girls squad that dominated a boys league; to upstate New York for the Harlem Globetrotters. The Knicks lost 65 games that season but still finished fourth in attendance. See, that’s a basketball town. Throughout this year’s run, obscure members of such terrible teams, players like Ron Baker and Emmanuel Mudiay and Kevin Knox, have been shouted out, even celebrated, on social media.

No one will be chanting “Fire Dolan” and “Sell…the…team,” like fans have done in the past, anytime soon. Dolan deserves full credit for hiring Rose, LeBron James’ former agent, in 2020. Rose took the gamble on Brunson, signing him to a four-year, $104 million free-agent deal in the summer of 2022. Brunson, a second-round draft pick, had fine years in Dallas but played second fiddle, at best, to Luka Doncic. Rose’s pursuit smelled desperate. Turns out, it was genius. 

The KAT and Bridges deals also panned out, as did Rose’s decision to fire coach Tom Thibodeau, whom he hired shortly after joining the organization and who last season led the Knicks to their first Eastern Conference Finals in a quarter century. The move made little logical sense at the time. But Rose bet that a less gruff voice, ultimately Mike Brown’s, was required to win it all. He was right. All the starters are under contract next season. Dolan and dynasty, in the same sentence? 

After this Knicks postseason, nothing’s a reach. But right now, New Yorkers, let’s breathe and relish this moment. City Island: throw a parade for two-way backup guard Deuce McBride this summer. Far Rockaway: have a Landry Shamet Day. Tottenville: host a block party for rim-protector extraordinaire Mitchell Robinson, despite that god-awful foul shot. His pure-effort offensive rebound off a missed foul shot, late in Game 5, was crucial to holding New York’s lead, and made up for his line-drive bricks. Brooklyn’s Berry Street Houses, the public housing complex where Alvarado grew up, should rename the place after him, at least for a day. As should his alma mater, Christ the King High School in Middle Village. (Leo would approve, right?)  

Politicians and pundits and former residents have battered New York City in recent years, branding our town as a symbol of a country gone to hell. They mock our mayor as some out-of-touch socialist who’ll run us into the ground, and spotlight the few bad apples who took the celebrations too far. Now, maybe they’ll hesitate, for a brief second, before coming after us, out of respect for our basketball team. What a win that would be. Mike Breen, the son of a steamfitter from Yonkers, N.Y., just over the city line, who went to college in the Bronx and has served as the team’s play-by-play voice for 30-plus years, puts it best. “Bang!” Breen says after a big bucket. Double bang. Knicks in ‘26, once and forever. 

Cover Source Images by: Getty Images (13): Dustin Satloff (3);  Al Bello (2); Jason Miller; Pamela Smith(2); Sarah Stier (3); Elsa (20) AP Photos (26): Lyndsey Regis; Heather Khalifa (2); Ross D. Franklin (5); Andrea Renault (2); Ryan Murphy (4); David J. Phillip; Seth Wenig; Pamela Smith (2); Frank Franklin II (2); David Zalubowski; Jeff Chiu (2); John McDonnell; Efren Landaos; Duane Burleson