{"id":744724,"date":"2026-06-18T15:26:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T15:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/744724\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T15:26:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T15:26:13","slug":"knicks-fans-flood-streets-ahead-of-nba-championship-parade-which-might-be-nycs-largest-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/744724\/","title":{"rendered":"Knicks fans flood streets ahead of NBA championship parade, which might be NYC’s largest ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s time to party, Knicks fans! For the first time in franchise history, the New York Knicks are having a championship parade<\/a>. New Yorkers flooded the streets of lower Manhattan before dawn on Thursday, hours before it was set to begin.<\/p>\n

Shortly before 7:30 a.m., the New York Police Department issued an alert<\/a> declaring that sidewalk viewing pens along Broadway were full, and that “no one else will be allowed in the viewing area.”<\/p>\n

Yes, this is the team’s third NBA championship, but the winning teams in the 1970s never got an official parade.<\/p>\n

After the Knicks eliminated the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Saturday to win their first title since 1973, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that the 2026 champions would be celebrated with a proper ticker-tape parade through lower Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Follow Yahoo Sports’ live blog: Knicks championship parade live updates: New York celebrates first NBA Finals win since 1973<\/a><\/p>\n

What is a ticker-tape parade, you ask? It got its name from the thin strips of paper that telegraphs would print stock market data on. During parades, people on Wall Street would throw them out of windows in lieu of confetti. Ticker-tape parades became a tradition after October 1886, with the celebration of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The New York Police Department said it is deploying 10,000 officers, the most it’s ever assigned to a planned event.<\/p>\n

Here’s what else we know about the parade.<\/p>\n

When and where\"Thousands<\/p>\n

Thousands of fans crowd into lower Manhattan near Wall Street before the parade.<\/p>\n

(Spencer Platt via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The parade is set to start at 10 a.m. ET.<\/p>\n

The parade will travel north through the Financial District, from about Battery Park to City Hall. It’ll go up the Canyon of Heroes \u2014 aka Broadway \u2014 which is marked with plaques in the ground commemorating past ticker-tape parades. To honor the Knicks, the New York City Department of Transportation also installed new orange and blue “Champions Way<\/a>” signs along the parade route.<\/p>\n

While the parades mostly celebrate sports championship victories these days, they used to honor heroic astronauts like John Glenn, visiting presidents of foreign countries, Olympians and even Albert Einstein.<\/p>\n

\"Fans<\/p>\n

Fans arrived early hoping to catch a glimpse of the NBA champions.<\/p>\n

(Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Once the floats reach City Hall, Mamdani will preside over a ceremony to present NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson and his teammates with the Keys to the City.<\/p>\n

To close out the celebration, multi-Grammy-winning singer and pianist Alicia Keys will perform “Empire State of Mind,” her 2009 collaboration with Jay-Z, Knicks owner James Dolan told Fox 5<\/a>. It’s unclear whether Jay-Z will be performing as well. Keys hinted at her attendance in a FaceTime on Wednesday with Knicks player OG Anunoby.<\/p>\n

“One of the key things we wanted to make sure was that players and their families could be here,” Mamdani told NY1<\/a> on Monday. The mayor, a lifelong Knicks fan, has been one of the team’s most vocal celebrants throughout the playoffs, including signing a tongue-in-cheek “executive order” that repealed children’s bedtimes during the finals.<\/p>\n

Mamdani acknowledged that Thursday is also the day of the New York Regents exams, standardized tests that high school students take for core subjects. “My encouragement would be that you should still be taking the Regents,” he advised New York City students. “Unlike the executive order for bedtimes, this is something I cannot repeal.”<\/p>\n

The NYPD says it’s deploying the largest number of officers ever for a planned event<\/p>\n

The NYPD said that it planned to deploy over 10,000 officers for Thursday’s parade, which it says is “the largest number assigned to any planned event.”<\/p>\n

Additionally, all parade attendees will be screened. NYC.gov<\/a> lists prohibited items as: bags, backpacks, chairs, strollers, coolers and drones, among several other things. People who need to gain access to office buildings or residences along the parade route will be allowed entry with proper identification.<\/p>\n

The city will light up Thursday night<\/p>\n

Three city buildings \u2014 Manhattan City Hall, the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building and Brooklyn’s Borough Hall \u2014 will be lit up in Knicks blue and orange that night, the mayor’s office said.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The New York City skyline is illuminated in the colors of the New York Knicks.<\/p>\n

(Gary Hershorn via Getty Images)How to watch<\/p>\n

Knicks fans who aren’t able to make it to downtown Manhattan on Thursday will be able to watch it live on major New York City television stations, including ABC<\/a> and NBC<\/a>, as well as sports networks like MSG Network.<\/p>\n

You can also watch an official livestream<\/a> on the mayor\u2019s YouTube page.<\/p>\n

Why this will be the first ticker-tape parade for the Knicks<\/p>\n

The Knicks haven’t won an NBA championship since 1973, when Walt Frazier and Willis Reed led the team to its second title. The Knicks won their first in 1970, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers in a seven-game series.<\/p>\n

At that time, New York City Mayor John Lindsay halted ticker-tape parades for sports teams, citing disruptions to traffic and shopping. So neither winning team in 1970 or 1973 received a parade after their wins, but were recognized in ceremonies at Gracie Mansion and City Hall.<\/p>\n

A generation of New York basketball fans has also grown up without the Knicks winning a championship, making Thursday’s celebration the kind of citywide moment some Knicks fans have been waiting for their entire lives.<\/p>\n

Brunson scored 45 points in Saturday’s clincher to seal the championship, matching Michael Jordan’s record for the most points scored by any player in a title-clinching game.<\/p>\n

“There’s going to be players; there’s going to be city employees; there are going to be so many people for whom this has been a dream for their entire life,” Mamdani told NY1. “I would encourage people to come as early as they can. \u2026 This is a moment so many have been waiting for, and I think we may very well see the largest parade in our city’s history.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s time to party, Knicks fans! For the first time in franchise history, the New York Knicks are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,7187,358422,255703,20455,12845,7232,590,36999,1026,348454,9275,10549,85,358423,323330,119672],"class_list":["post-744724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brooklyn","tag-championship-parade","tag-city-hall","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-knicks","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-nba","tag-nba-championship","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-police-department","tag-og-anunoby","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-sports","tag-the-parade","tag-ticker-tape-parade","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744724","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=744724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}