The New York Knicks are going to the NBA Finals, thanks to some help from a pro wrestling ghoul.
That's not a bit. That's just what happened. The Knicks are heading to their first Finals since the Clinton administration, and a meaningful portion of the internet is crediting Danhausen — a vampire-gremlin-ghoul character from the world of professional wrestling who makes a habit of cursing people who irritate him — with nearly derailing the whole thing.
We say 'derail' because Danhausen initially cursed the Knicks ahead of their first-round series against the Atlanta Hawks. During his appearance on ESPN's First Take, Stephen A. Smith, who has never been accused of being easy to deal with, apparently rubbed Danhausen the wrong way. Danhausen then cursed the Knicks, and the New York team went down 2-1 to a Hawks team they were heavily favored to beat.
He then uncursed the New York Knicks after a pro wrestling podcaster paid him on Cameo to do so. "Alright, I guess I've been paid, so the New York Knicks, I guess you can be uncursed."
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The uncursing happened the morning of Game 6. The Knicks won by 51 points, the sixth-largest margin of victory in NBA playoff history. They then won their next eight games without losing, finishing the postseason on a 10-0 run — the fifth-longest playoff winning streak in NBA history, one game shy of the 11-game runs by the 1989 and 2003 Lakers.
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The collision between the NBA and pro wrestling is not rare. Dennis Rodman famously appeared on an episode of WCW Nitro in the middle of the 1998 NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz. Shaquille O'Neal has made multiple WWE appearances and got speared through a table in the early days of All Elite Wrestling. That iconic meme of a young LeBron James taking a picture with his flip phone is from a 2003 episode of Monday Night Raw. More recently, in 2024, Knicks star Jalen Brunson got in the ring with Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton on a June episode of Smackdown — just weeks after Haliburton knocked New York out of the Eastern Conference Finals.
So a vampiric wrestling gremlin getting paid on Cameo to uncurse the Knicks is, to anyone who has watched pro wrestling, probably the least surprising thing on this list. For everyone else, it's admittedly pretty weird.
Danhausen, for his part, is having a blast with it. He's already selling t-shirts commemorating the uncursing. He debuted for WWE this past February and got off to a rocky start, but has since become the company's second-highest merchandise seller despite having wrestled exactly two matches since his debut.
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So, did a wrestling ghoul's Cameo alter the trajectory of a professional basketball team? Probably not. Jalen Brunson is very good at basketball. Karl-Anthony Towns is a seven-footer who can shoot threes and run the offense. These things matter more than curses. However, they did win a playoff game by 51 points, the same morning Danhausen got paid to nonchalantly uncurse them. They're going to the NBA Finals for the first time in 27 years.
Probably a coincidence. Almost certainly a coincidence. The kind of coincidence, though, that Knicks fans are going to be telling their kids about.