New York yawped, from the packed sweaty bars around Madison Square Garden to watch parties at the Freeport Nautical Mile and Amagansett Square. From the abiding faithful who grew up with the mighty Ewing to the new generation sporting Brunson kit, New Yorkers cheered: Knicks in Five, and 53 years of futility is done.
The Knicks were NBA champions on Saturday for the first time since 1973 and the third time in the team’s 80 years of existence, storming once more from behind to bury the Spurs, 94-90, in San Antonio in Game 5 of a series they dominated. Before the blip of a Game 3 loss, they won 13 straight postseason games.
Dance parties broke out on the streets, revelers singing along to Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” and Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” Some wore the Knicks’ orange and blue; some were shirtless in the heat.
Tens of thousands poured into the streets near Greeley Square Park in midtown, some climbing traffic lights to do pullups. As T-shirt vendors materialized to sell commemorative gear, some people tore and set fire to jerseys bearing the name of Spurs star Victor Wembanyama, and police arrested a man in a Spiderman suit wearing a Knicks jersey who had scaled a traffic pole. The crowd chanted “Free Spidey.”
In Times Square, dozens of people mounted buses and cars, creating traffic gridlock.
On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, they emptied onto the streets chanting “Let’s Go Knicks.” Cars blared their horns, fireworks sounded and a pack of motorcycles, 30-40 strong, careened down Broadway.
The night included plenty of bad behavior, including gunshots. But the vast majority basked in the joy of a world championship.
Jesse Addesso, with Faith Sekol, said the Knicks are “blood” and “family” to him. Credit: Bahar Ostadan
In a Long Island Rail Road train headed back to Long Beach, Jesse Addesso, 24, said he’d been “a Knicks fan ever since my frontal lobe developed. … Knicks is blood to me, Knicks is family. This win means everything.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani tweeted a similar assessment: ‘HISTORY.” Minutes later, he tweeted again: “Parade. Thursday. Manhattan.”
At a watch party in Amagansett attended by close to 1,000 people, young fans who’d never experienced a Knicks championship hugged and shouted into the night, while veterans basked in the glow. “It’s a long wait, but it’s sweet,” said Jamie Grifo, 70, who was in 11th grade and 17 years old the last time the Knicks won a championship.
Grifo, of Manhattan, now a professor and program director of the NYU Langone Fertility Center at NYU Medical Center, said he’d been a fan since he was 5. “You just keep hoping each year, each year, each year,” he said. “You think maybe this is the year. And guess what? This is the year!”
What did this win mean to the younger fans? “Everything!” screamed Lukas Ferraz Monteiro, 21, from Bridgehampton.
His friends — Johnny Nill, Nathan Weise, Owen Caulfield and Saverir Anderson — were giddy. The men, in their early 20s, had grown up with a team that lost more games than it won. Fortunes changed with the signing of Jalen Brunson, who scored a game high 45 points Saturday night. “I love that guy,” one of them said. “King of NY.”
Nill, 22, of Sag Harbor, said he’d always believed. “Never doubted it,” he said. “Knicks all day — come on, let’s go!”
On the East End, Matias Mesa, 11, showed his Knicks pride at Amagansett Square’s watch party. Credit: Justin Girshon
Earlier in the night, Matias Mesa, 11, from East Hampton and wearing a Brunson jersey, said he was looking forward to a win. “A lot,” Mesa said of how much a Knicks title would mean. “I would be really excited.”
At a watch party at Prime on the Mile, a restaurant on Freeport’s Nautical Mile, Tunishia Martinez wept. Martinez, 40, from Southside Jamaica, Queens, said she was thinking of her father and brother, devoted fans who were not alive to take in the win. “This just felt like the team just hugged us all,” she said.
Bryan Martin, 46, of Queens, also celebrating at the restaurant, said he was feeling emotions “pretty close” to what he felt when his son was born.
“I never thought I’d see this day,” Martin said. “We’re not losers tonight, we’re winners, we’re champions.”
Shawn Page, 56, of South Merrick, said the win would “bring a lot of people closer and again, give a sense of unity and just make everybody feel like how New York used to feel.”
By early Sunday morning, the scene on Long Island Rail Road trains bearing fans east from Penn Station was quieter. Sweaty fans slumped into their chairs on the Long Beach just after 1 a.m.
That was until William West and Rannie Battle reminded their fellow passengers why they ventured all the way into Manhattan. “I can die happy now,” Battle said. “My Knicks got the ‘ship, baby. That’s why.”
After the game clock ticked to zero, not everyone went home or into the streets; some went shopping. Long lines formed outside at least two DICK’s Sporting Goods stores on Long Island. Before the game even started, the chain had announced a plan to reopen stores on Long Island and elsewhere in the tristate area “immediately” to sell gear after a Knicks Game 5 win.
“We’ve been getting shipments of upwards of 20 boxes almost every day, and they’re gone within the day,” said Sean McCourt, a front end manager at DICK’s Commack. “It’s been a madhouse.”
Newsday’s Matthew Chayes, Alek Lewis, Bahar Ostadan, Ashna Balroop, Justin Girshon and Angelina Livigni contributed to this story.
Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.