NEW YORK — Gotham always needs a villain.
New York prefers someone to revile. Someone to rally against. This city is girded with grievances. The abysmal traffic. The absurd rent. The oppressive weather. The idiot tourist in the way on a busy sidewalk. The taxi darting across three lanes with no blinker. The neighbor who somehow got a better deal. This city wakes up looking for a place to put its fury.
And because of New York’s significance as a city sitting at the center of so much American excellence, it attracts as much resentment as it does admiration. It makes New Yorkers a proud and protective people. That tension fuels New York’s character. Gives the city its charm, its toughness.
It translates to their fandom. Fittingly, New York sports history is littered with villains. Tom Brady. Pedro Martinez. Sidney Crosby.
And the Knicks? The one team that claims all of New York? The franchise New Yorkers love like family members? Their fans hated the guts of several opponents. Michael Jordan. Reggie Miller. Alonzo Mourning. Tyrese Haliburton joined the ranks a year ago.
Monday, Knicks fans identified their next villain: Victor Wembanyama. They proclaimed him the antagonist of their Knicks’ glorious season by serenading him with their favorite four-letter word. All but a term of endearment when hurled at opposing superstars.
If it felt as if this supposed disdain for Wembanyama came out of nowhere, that’s because it did. The bliss of 13 straight postseason wins by the Knickerbockers filled fans’ hearts with too much joy to be aggrieved. So inebriated off the invincibility of their beloved squad, they hadn’t bothered anointing a new villain.
And then Wembanyama proceeded to deconstruct the Knicks: 32 points on 18 shots, eight rebounds, six assists and three blocks in 39 minutes. He took his show, a preview of his future dominance, onto the league’s biggest stage. Wembanyama’s first monster NBA Finals performance not only recalibrated the Spurs’ title hopes, lifting San Antonio to a 115-111 road win, it reminded Knicks fans this generational talent has the capacity to ruin their dream season.
Monday, Wembanyama introduced the possibility of taking what looked to be the culmination of the Knicks’ magical season and crumbling it like a printed chapter of another New York heartbreak story.
Fear arrived in Game 3. So, a villain he became.
“I guess,” Wembanyama said before taking his typically long pause to gather his thoughts. “I’m nowhere near Trae Young level, though.”
He smiled. Wembanyama understands what’s happening. He tipped off his awareness with his mention of Young, who became an enemy to the orange and blue in the 2021 playoffs when he trolled Knicks fans after bouncing their team.
But that beef with Young came in a first-round matchup. This is the finals. And Wembanyama stands in the way of ending a 53-year championship drought.
Every great city tells itself stories. And New York loves the villains. It morphs opponents into antagonists in the city’s perennial pursuit of glory it is forever owed.
Hate, however, is Knicks fans’ love language. They declare respect through vexation.
Knicks fans are diehards. True hoop fans who know the game. They recognize the extraterrestrial before them. They appreciate transcendent talent while they root for its demise. And Knicks’ fans villainizing of Wembanyama is them recognizing his eliteness. Because villains provide purpose. They galvanize people. They summon heroes. They provide an outlet for frustration and fear.
Knicks fans don’t need to fabricate vitriol. Wembanyama warrants the real stuff. He’s not above the kind of antics that draw ire. Like the way he shoved Jalen Brunson, who was trying to screen him. Everyone saw him elbow the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Naz Reid and, if you believe social media lip readers, order the Spurs’ goons to goon.
Wembanyama is no wilting violet. And he didn’t come to warm hearts. He came to snatch chains off necks. He carries his own competitive zeal. He relishes the smoke. He’s instigated animosity.
The Knicks are two wins from their first championship since the internet was called ARPANET. In Game 3, it dawned on their fans that losing was possible. Because standing on the other side of their team wasn’t merely another superstar. But the 7-foot-4 obstacle in the way of the championship they deserve most in life.
Wembanyama presented himself as a viable destructor of dreams. He stepped into the most electric, frenetic, combustible, chaotic, expensive crowd New York could throw at him. It didn’t faze him. It settled him. The noise, the chaos, provoked the calm and clarity he needed.
“At home,” Wembanyama explained, ”it really feels like playing six against five. Here it feels like five against six.”
Victor Wembanyama had plenty of reason to relish the Spurs’ performance in Game 3. (Al Bello / Getty Images)
He smiled. Because Wembanyama likes that. The harder road. He’s one of those players who convert hostility into energy. He finds his peace in the middle of storms. Adversity channels his chi. He understands greatness to be hard. He knows that conquering the NBA requires all of him. So these scenarios he keeps finding himself in, these overwhelming situations, these pressurized settings and high-stakes moments, remind him of the path he’s on and how much he prepared.
So before the game, when the first finals game in Madison Square Garden had the crowd frothing, when the attendance of President Donald Trump added an historic intensity and political angst to the setting, Wembanyama’s teammates knew. They could see his composure. They witnessed the absence of awe or eagerness.
And when he started the game with back-to-back dunks, converting the yells of the crowd into gasps, the Spurs knew their superstar was on business. Knicks fans knew, too, judging by how the Garden, at times ready to explode, wound up filled with an ominous silence following whatever jaw-dropping thing Wemby did.
In Game 2, he’d experienced the heartbreak of superstardom. With his critical turnover and missed game-winner, he got a dose of life as culprit instead of the hero. And like those cut from otherworldly fabric, he responded with a rebuttal performance.
“I would say it’s the way that everybody would think a great player would react,” Spurs point guard De’Aaron Fox said. “Obviously, he was upset with himself. It’s not even, like I said, about the missed shots. He would get on himself more about the turnover at the end of the game. Those things happen.
“There was definitely no inkling that I thought he wouldn’t come out here and respond the way that he did.”
Wembanyama has been good for one of these eye-popping performances in every series. But he looked passive, tired, a lesser version of himself, in the first two games in San Antonio. Coming off the seven-game series with the Oklahoma City Thunder, there were questions about whether he’d have enough to pull off something special.
But Madison Square Garden brings it out of the great ones. Any player worth the marquee found the “World’s Most Famous Arena” as a proper venue to craft lore.
With San Antonio on the ropes, all but facing elimination, Wembanyama orchestrated one of those performances. The Knicks are still in good shape being at home. But the Spurs are now one monster game from leveling this series. And from Wemby grappling Gotham with dread, obsessively imagining the doom of an epic Knicks collapse.
Downright villainous.