Ignacio Jimenez has a lot on the line in the NBA Finals.
He has lived on San Antonio’s Southeast Side for 16 years, has been watching the playoffs at bars and from friends’ living rooms, and even drove down Southwest Military Drive on a recent night honking his horn to celebrate his team clinching a spot in the Finals.
That street has been a hotbed of honking when the Spurs have won pivotal games in the postseason. But Jimenez may have been the only one laying on the horn that night.
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That’s because he was celebrating the New York Knicks shutting out the Cleveland Cavaliers and making it to the Finals.
Jimenez said passersby cheered, apparently thinking he was professing his love for the Spurs, even though they weren’t playing that night. When he rolled down his window and flashed his Knicks snapback, the cheers turned into jeers.
But that may not be the worst of it. If the Spurs beat the Knicks to win their sixth NBA championship, Jimenez will have to do something almost unthinkable: put on a Spurs jersey.
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Jimenez, a New Jersey native and lifelong Knicks fan, made a bet with his wife, a South Side native and Spurs fan. The loser has to post a photo of them wearing the other team’s jersey.
Jimenez, 48, watched the Knicks take a 2-0 series lead Friday at Max and Louie’s, a New York City-style diner on the North Side, wearing bright orange basketball shorts and orange-and-white Jordans. Around him were 40 fellow San Antonians stuck in the same awkward position: Knicks diehards living in a city where their opponent’s logo is plastered all over restaurant windows, employees come to work in team gear and “Go Spurs Go” has turned into a daily greeting.
“It’s me against the entire city,” said Charlie Rouson, who grew up in Queens and teaches English to middle schoolers on the West Side.
Rouson’s seventh-grade students have made their feelings clear.
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“They’ve been telling me the Knicks are trash since before the playoffs started,” said Rouson, 36.
Servers in Spurs T-shirts shuffled in and out of the restaurant’s back room, carrying chicken tenders, pizza, cheesecake and beer to fans wearing blue and orange hard hats, a nod to both the team’s disciplined, unflashy defense and New York’s working-class roots. Beneath the TV, strips of masking tape held up a blue Knicks flag.
William Gordon and his son Bryson Gordon, 5, watch Game 2 of the NBA Finals between the Spurs and the Knicks at Max and Louie’s New York Diner on June 5.
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Meat lovers pizza, along with other New York fare, is served at Max and Louie’s New York Diner while local Knicks fans watch Game 2 of the NBA Finals.
Andrew J. Whitaker/San Antonio Express-News
At the end of the first quarter, Spurs center Luke Kornet bumped Knicks star Jalen Brunson as he dribbled up the floor, knocking him to the ground and getting called for a foul. A man in a Knicks chain chimed in from the back of the room.
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“That’s attempted murder over there!” Darrell Williams yelled.
Fans jumped up from their tables and shouted with him. They wanted Kornet to get a flagrant foul.
Williams’ 17-year-old daughter, Zaire, sat to his right wearing a rival — and bigger — silver Spurs chain.
Darrell Williams, 49, was born into a military family in New York and moved around the country. He joined the military himself and was eventually stationed at Randolph Air Force Base. He has been in San Antonio ever since.
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So he’s not surprised that his three children, who grew up going to games at the Frost Bank Center, root for the Spurs.
“They’ve gotta rep where they’re from,” Williams said. “I get it.”
Zaire Williams, however, thinks her dad has all but “disowned” her after they drove downtown last week — when the Spurs hosted the Knicks —to take in the Finals scene and ended up in dueling chants on the street.
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“I’m in the full-on Spurs gear. He’s in the full-on Knicks gear, all ‘Go, New York, go! Go, New York, go!’” Zaire Williams said. “And I’m over here like, ‘Go, Spurs, go!’ We’re extremely divided right now.”
Jimenez said he has gotten “strange looks” while wearing his Knicks gear, covered in blue and orange from his cap to his sneakers. Otherwise, he said, his exchanges with Spurs fans have been mostly cordial.
Aaron Williams, left and bottom, wears Knicks memorabilia and takes a photo of Eric Reich, top, during a watch party for Game 2 of the NBA Finals at Max and Louie’s New York Diner on June 5.
Andrew J. Whitaker/San Antonio Express-News
“I like when a town can love their sports team and not take it to that level,” he said.
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The Spurs-Knicks matchup carries particular weight for Knicks fans because it’s a rematch of 1999, the last time the Knicks were in the Finals. The Spurs, led by a young center named Tim Duncan, won the championship in five games.
Kevin Lindquist watched that series in Philadelphia, shortly after moving there from his mother’s house in Queens, where he grew up with 14 relatives in a four-bedroom home. Lindquist had a soft spot for Duncan because Lindquist’s father, like Duncan, hails from St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Kevin Lindquist hands out hardhats to other local Knicks fans at Max and Louie’s New York Diner head of Game 2 of the NBA Finals.
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Kai Williams wears a Spurs hat on top of a Knicks hardhat while out with his dad, Aaron Williams, and other local Knicks fans to watch Game 2 of the NBA Finals on June 5.
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Shawn LaFontainein, left, and Dearick Ownes hang up a Knicks flag at Max and Louie’s New York Diner to watch Game 2 of the NBA Finals on June 5.
Andrew J. Whitaker/San Antonio Express-News
A former Army combat medic who lives in Cibolo, Lindquist has been organizing the watch parties for local Knicks fans throughout the playoffs. Demand was so high for a spot to watch Game 2 that he rented out a second location in Schertz to accommodate more fans. He drove there from Max and Louie’s during halftime to catch the second half.
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Lindquist, 46, said he spent more than $2,000 organizing the parties, including renting the spaces, buying chicken tenders and beer for guests, and purchasing Knicks gear for a raffle at halftime.
He watched the Knicks take Game 1 at the Frost Bank Center and was “excited to see a beautiful mix of New Yorkers and San Antonians” converging in town. But he was surprised by the ferocity of some Spurs fans, whom he said are usually respectful. One fan told him they hoped Knicks center Mitchell Robinson, who is playing with a broken pinkie finger, would break another finger — “something New Yorkers would say,” Lindquist said.
The night the Spurs clinched their spot in the Finals, Lindquist was returning from a trip to Oregon, where he bought two jerseys at Nike’s headquarters. One was a Victor Wembanyama jersey, and the other was a Brunson jersey.
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Lindquist presented both jerseys to Xander, his 13-year-old son who was born at Brooke Army Medical Center and has lived in the San Antonio area most of his life.
Xander chose the Wemby jersey.
“He broke my heart a little bit. Everybody in the house, they support the Knicks,” Lindquist said. “How does this happen?”
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Local Knicks fans react during Game 2 of the NBA Finals between the Spurs and the Knicks at Max and Louie’s New York Diner on June 5.
Andrew J. Whitaker/San Antonio Express-News