{"id":254829,"date":"2026-06-04T04:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T04:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/254829\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T04:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T04:22:12","slug":"new-york-city-finals-matchup-brings-up-old-salsa-feud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/254829\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cNew York City?\u201d Finals matchup brings up old salsa feud"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NBA Finals are a rematch of the 1999 Finals, when a young San Antonio Spurs center picked No. 1 in the draft led his team to a victory over the veteran, wing-heavy New York Knicks featuring a former No. 1 pick at center. But they\u2019re also a battle for the hearts and minds of America\u2019s picante-sauce lovers.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right. San Antonio<\/a> is the home of Pace Picante sauce, a condiment that took America by storm by introducing what its founder called \u201cthe syrup of the Southwest.\u201d This may sound crazy to a generation raised on salsa and hot sauces, where appearing on \u201cHot Ones\u201d is a celebrity rite of passage, but the idea of a spicy, tomato-and-jalape\u00f1o sauce as flavoring was highly exotic even into the 1990\u2019s. So much that Jerry Seinfeld couldn\u2019t imagine the idea of salsa being available in a diner.<\/p>\n

Pace Picante\u2019s signature commercial emphasized its Texas roots. Cowboys eating around the campfire extol the virtues of Pace Picante, a blend of \u201cfresh vegetables and spices, made by people who know what picante sauce is supposed to taste like.\u201d Where is the beleaguered cook\u2019s \u201cMexican Sauce\u201d made? New York City.<\/p>\n

Then the cowboys decide to murder the cook.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Times have changed. Pace Foods now has their headquarters in Paris, Texas. They have a full line of different salsas that would blow those cowboys\u2019 minds, including varieties with pineapple and mangos, which might well lead those trigger-happy wranglers to threaten another extra-judicial killing if it were served to them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also no longer a food that\u2019s necessarily associated with Texas. Honestly, if you offered your average foodie a salsa that came from New York City, specifically Brooklyn<\/a>, they\u2019d be pumped. Of course, if you told someone in the early 90\u2019s that the best player in the NBA would be a 7-foot-5 center from France who trained with Chinese monks in the offseason, they\u2019d probably be just as disbelieving as those cowboys.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d also be surprised that Spike Lee\u2019s biggest rival as the Knicks biggest celebrity fan would be a waifish actor dating the daughter of O.J. Simpson\u2019s lawyer\u2019s ex-wife and an Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete who is now a woman named Caitlyn Jenner. And if they followed the 90\u2019s Knicks, they\u2019d be shocked that officials review video for flagrant foul calls when no one is bleeding or spitting out teeth.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no word on whether New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani and San Antonio Mayor Who Cares have made a traditional bet for the Finals, where San Antonio gets bagels and a box of rats if they win and New York gets churros and podcasters from Austin. But if they do, let\u2019s hope it includes an exchange of picante sauces.<\/p>\n

(For the record, celebrity Spurs fans include Samuel L. Jackson (why?), Texas native Selena Gomez, Tommy Lee Jones, and George Strait.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA Finals are a rematch of the 1999 Finals, when a young San Antonio Spurs center picked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[97388,98,99250,222,59434,9,24,55,54,1104,56,9416,9138,20323],"class_list":["post-254829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-1999-nba-finals","tag-brooklyn","tag-latrell-sprewell","tag-madison-square-garden","tag-nbae","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-ny","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-tim-duncan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}