Last year, Jennifer Shoemaker, a longtime Knicks fan, was feeling devastated. Her friend group of 10 years had dissolved. She was single and had no family in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really broke me,\u201d she said, her voice cracking. \u201cI was so lonely.\u201d<\/p>\n
But lately her depression has abated. Her hopes are up. Much of it, she says, is because of the Knicks.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just because they have won 13 games in a row. (Although that alone has been uplifting.) It\u2019s because New York City has transformed into a \u201clove fest,\u201d said Ms. Shoemaker, 45, an artist and caterer who lives on the Upper East Side.<\/p>\n
Before the team\u2019s winning streak, people met each other with silence and averted eyes. Now, she added, \u201cthe vibes are immaculate.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Monday, while in Times Square wearing her white Knicks shorts, strangers greeted Ms. Shoemaker with an exuberant chant: \u201cLet\u2019s go Knicks!\u201d<\/p>\n
During the last two games, she attended watch parties with new friends, women she met through the Discord group Knicks Girls HQ.<\/p>\n
Her family members have been calling and texting to say that they\u2019re rooting for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just made me feel like I have a place in the world again,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I hadn\u2019t felt that in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite living in the most populous city in the country, more than half<\/a> of New Yorkers report feeling lonely at least some of the time. But as the Knicks continue their historic N.B.A. finals run, the team\u2019s success has spawned a renewed sense of community. (Maybe it\u2019s no coincidence that Game 3 happens to fall on National Best Friends Day<\/a>.)<\/p>\n That solidarity is something that Jonathan Haidt, author of \u201cThe Anxious Generation,\u201d refers to as \u201ccollective effervescence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are built for shared sacredness,\u201d he wrote recently on Instagram. \u201cWhether through religion, spirituality, meditation, music or art, there are moments when we transcend the mundane and feel a hint of something more vast and meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n That shared identity bridges divides, cutting through the fragmentation of daily life. And offering hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, Jennifer Shoemaker, a longtime Knicks fan, was feeling devastated. Her friend group of 10 years had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[67480,24094,97318,11815,78318,9,24,1104,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-260006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-fans-persons","tag-friendship","tag-loneliness","tag-national-basketball-assn","tag-nba-championship","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260006","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=260006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}