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<\/p>\n\n New York (AFP) \u2013 As New York prepares to host the World Cup, the city is instead awash in Knicks blue and orange, reflecting a deep love for the gritty, unifying team chasing a historic NBA Finals victory. <\/p>\n
Issued on: 07\/06\/2026 – 03:22<\/p>\n
3 min Reading time\n<\/p>\n
The Knicks took a commanding 2-0 lead on Friday in the best of seven series against the San Antonio Spurs, and now the action shifts to the Big Apple for games three and four.<\/p>\n
“The Knicks, this is New York at its very best right now,” said John Patrick Walsh, 65, who comes from a family of fans.<\/p>\n
“Everybody’s a Knicks fan together. It’s a huge family, it’s all love,” Walsh, a voice actor, told AFP near Madison Square Garden, the home of the Knicks. <\/p>\n
The streets around the Manhattan venue have become a rallying point for thousands of fans to cheer on their team, as celebrity superfans including Spike Lee, Timothee Chalamet and Ben Stiller applaud courtside.<\/p>\n
“It’s very energetic, very chaotic,” said Melanie Mendoza, a waitress at the Bourbon and Branch, a bar not far from the iconic Garden that is fully decked out in the team’s colors.<\/p>\n
“Even if you don’t know anything about basketball, you kind of get into that atmosphere, that vibe. People go crazy, basically.”<\/p>\n
Outdoor watch parties around Madison Square Garden were initially banned during the NBA playoffs after multiple arrests during raucous celebrations, but will take place for the rest of the finals. <\/p>\n
‘The city’s game’<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A subway station near Madison Square Garden has been painted in Knicks blue and orange \u00a9 TIMOTHY A.CLARY \/ AFP\/File <\/p>\n
After more than 50 years without a title and decades of false starts, the Knicks’ rebirth is fueling a rare level of citywide enthusiasm.<\/p>\n
Sports sociologist Jay Coakley, of the University of Colorado, noted that basketball “is a fast game, so it represents kind of the pace of city life, especially New York City life.”<\/p>\n
For him, that explains why so many support the Knicks despite other New York sports teams like the Yankees (baseball) or the Giants (American football) having far more success.<\/p>\n
Coakley also noted that the Knicks offer a sense of belonging for New York’s vast immigrant population, as they join other residents to back the team. <\/p>\n
Amy Bass, a sports studies professor at Manhattanville University, said that New York’s urban landscape just fits with basketball.<\/p>\n
“All anyone needs to play basketball is a ball and a hoop, a surface that you can dribble on, and New York City has an awful lot of that kind of space,” she said. <\/p>\n
“It is the city’s game, from Harlem to the Village.”<\/p>\n
Common language<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Analysts have described the Knicks as a unifying force for New York \u00a9 Timothy A. CLARY \/ AFP\/File <\/p>\n
The Knicks have drawn on their turbulent history to project an image of resilience — similar to how New Yorkers like to see themselves. <\/p>\n
In the 1970s, when they won their only two NBA titles, the Knicks were known as a “blue-collar, hard-working, tough-minded team,” according to Adam Criblez, author of a book on the squad.<\/p>\n
“Not that the other organizations didn’t, but the Knicks just captured the imagination,” said Criblez. <\/p>\n
The team’s roller-coaster run this season, with many dramatic wins secured in the final seconds, has reinforced that image.<\/p>\n
Bass noted that the Knicks have become a unifying force in a city plagued by huge social and economic inequalities. <\/p>\n
“The city can be lonely, the city can be hard,” she said. <\/p>\n
“In a moment where social media and AI and politics create islands, this is something that feels organic, a sharing of language, of goals.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York (AFP) \u2013 As New York prepares to host the World Cup, the city is instead awash…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-720761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}