The New York Knicks swept the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday night to earn their first berth to the NBA Finals since 1999. For long-suffering New York supporters eager to flaunt their fandom for the finals, securing a piece of Knicks merchandise is a completely new game.

This is the first time the Knicks are conference champions in the e-commerce era, and the biggest sports merchandise providers in the U.S. are eager to cash in. Fanatics, the official e-commerce partner of the NBA and other major leagues, began selling celebratory items featuring Knicks imagery online as soon as the team won Game 4 over the Cavaliers.

But for many New Yorkers, the convenience of ordering online couldn’t meet the immediate demand of sporting Knicks gear around the city the morning after the team’s most consequential victory in a generation.

J.P. Trang, a vintage moped salesman and Knicks fan from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, trekked all over Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday in search of a uniform with the name of his favorite player, Landry Shamet. The reserve guard’s electric Eastern Conference finals performance—shooting over 90% from 3-point range in the series against Cleveland—hastened Trang’s urgency to get some gear featuring Shamet’s No. 44.

“He’s the man. We are here for the pure Lan-Shametry,” he said, a play on the Knicks’ “Linsanity” phase with Jeremy Lin in 2012.

Trang and a friend first traveled to the Nike House of Innovation store in search of Shamet jerseys but struck out. They then traveled to the NBA Store on Fifth Avenue and 45th St. “:At first we asked the sales guy if they had any Shamet gear, and he laughed at us,” Trang said.

As with many reserve players, retailers don’t stock pre-made jerseys and T-shirts with Shamet’s name and number.

And since Fanatics warned buyers online that that licensed Knicks Finals merchandise may not ship until June, those seeking the official “locker room edition” hat and T-shirt within New York’s five boroughs had more limited in-person shopping options.

Modell’s Sporting Goods, the beloved New York sporting goods retailer which opened in 1889, liquidated all of its stores in 2020. Its bankruptcy followed earlier liquidations of major sporting goods chains including City Sports (in 2015) and Sports Authority (2016).

“Times have changed,” said Yesenia Peña, a sales associate at the Dick’s Sporting Goods in Glendale, Queens, one of two Dick’s locations within New York City limits. 

Peña said she previously worked at a Modell’s in Queens before joining Dick’s five years ago. “Modell’s was more of a neighborhood store; it was a community. People knew each other, it was for the real working man,” she said.

Not that she was complaining about the experience at Dick’s, where she said the available products were “really high quality.”

Customers entering the store in Queens, some 45 minutes east of midtown Manhattan, were immediately greeted with three tables of dedicated Knicks Finals merchandise, with T-shirts separated by gender and size. Gold-colored letter balloons spelling out K-N-I-C-K-S were flanked with other inflatable blue-and-orange decorative displays. Associates unpacked new Finals hats that had been delivered shortly before 3 p.m. Tuesday.

Samir Marisenovic, an FDNY firefighter from Ridgewood, stopped by after picking up his 5-year-old daughter from school, specifically to get the hat. “I’m a die-hard Knick fan,” he said. “This is my second time at the store today. I came in around 10 a.m. for the Finals shirt and the hat, but they didn’t have the hat yet, so I had to come back.”

Peña, who also described herself as a die-hard Yankees and Knicks fan, said she was excited to finally be putting the wares on sale. “We got the shirts in after they won Game 2” of the Eastern Conference Finals she said. “We were like, ‘Please, please, please can they win.’”

A spokeswoman for Dick’s Sporting Goods, which is headquartered outside of Pittsburgh, said the chain held “extended hours” at roughly 20 locations throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut immediately after the Knicks’ clinching win on Monday night. Stores also reopened at 7 a.m. Tuesday to accommodate fan demand.

Dick’s has expanded in recent years as the rest of the U.S. sporting goods landscape has contracted. It acquired sneaker seller Foot Locker last year and has moved into new areas, including into youth sports technology through its acquisition of GameChanger, and into media through an in-house content studio, Cookie Jar & A Dream, that produces original sports films.

But for all the evolution of retail since the Knicks’ last finals appearance, perhaps the most important technological improvement is the ability to customize gear.

Back at the NBA Store, Trang learned he could have a replica Shamet jersey made on the spot in the store’s custom printing station, so he paid $175 plus tax for a fresh white No. 44 kit.

“Do you need a bag?” the store associate asked Trang.

“Nope,” Trang said, just before pulling the jersey over his head. “I’m going to wear it out.”