Fifty-three years of waiting came to a tumultuous, giddy, whooping, stomping, clapping, chanting, cheering end on the streets of New York City on Saturday as the Knicks’ long-suffering fans erupted in celebration after their team came from behind in the closing minutes one more time and took down the San Antonio Spurs to win the N.B.A. title.
At a jampacked watch party outside Madison Square Garden for 3,000 screaming people, tears ran down faces and drums throbbed. Times Square felt like New Year’s Eve.
Hordes of celebrants shut down 10th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. Dancing fans shut down Avenue A in the East Village, too, as a fire truck moved slowly through the crowd to thunderous applause and several people climbed aboard until they were ordered down by firefighters.
A few blocks away, St. Marks Place was a carnival, complete with someone playing a celebratory trumpet out their apartment window. People flocked to fire escapes, climbed trees and scaffolding and light poles, anything to get a view of the spectacle that seemed to fill the whole city.
After four games in which the fans in Manhattan sometimes got out of control, the police were on high alert, and in the hours after the game, some of the celebrating took an ugly turn. On 42nd Street near the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown, people vandalized a school bus, caving in its front end as onlookers cheered. The police blocked entrances to the terminal to keep out rowdy crowds. Video taken near the Garden showed people jumping on a police car and leaving it with a shattered windshield. The police said that several people were arrested.
The Knicks were far away in Texas, winning the championship on the road, but their unstoppable energy flew across their hometown. At a watch party at Radio City Music Hall, confetti rained down from the ceiling. At Wollman Rink in Central Park, thousands of people shouted along with Frank Sinatra singing “New York, New York.” In Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, fireworks erupted and fans jumped on top of a yellow DHL truck.
The championship series has captivated the city like no sporting event in years, as New Yorkers who two weeks ago could not distinguish between a jump shot and a baloney sandwich now lovingly recite the names of their heroes — Brunson and KAT and Hart and the Game 4 savior, OG Anunoby, and the hometown kid, Jose Alvarado.
New York’s sports-loving mayor, Zohran Mamdani, posted a one-word tweet, “HISTORY,” and announced that the Knicks will receive a ticker-tape parade and the keys to the city on Thursday.
“Through near misses, heartbreak and a hope that every year could be our year, this city never stopped believing in the Knicks,” he said in a statement. “And this team fulfilled that hope with grit, resilience and heart — just like the five boroughs itself.”
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