{"id":260015,"date":"2026-06-09T01:52:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T01:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/260015\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T01:52:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T01:52:03","slug":"the-knicks-nba-finals-run-is-bringing-people-together-at-fancyfree-in-brooklyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/260015\/","title":{"rendered":"The Knicks NBA Finals Run Is Bringing People Together at FancyFree in Brooklyn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Estimated5 min read<\/p>\n

THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE the Knicks were set to tip off against the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, FancyFree was packed from end to end. I\u2019d gone to the bar in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, to do what any boy wants to do when his favorite sports team is in the playoffs: Watch the game surrounded by fellow fans, shouting and groaning at every successful layup and three-pointer clanked off the rim by the team that unites my city.<\/p>\n

FancyFree occupies a corner of Lafayette Avenue and South Elliott Place, where it sits with a cafe-style patio out front. Inside, the long space\u2014exposed brick walls, wooden ceiling fans high above\u2014narrows in the center for the bar, before opening up in the back with more tables and space to congregate. Fried chicken sandwiches, burgers, and lemon pepper wings sling from the kitchen to tables and high tops, giving the room a rich smell. By the time I got there before the Hawks game, it was already around 80 percent packed\u2014a pregame rush with a chaotic buzz. The vibe was less sports bar and more of an event space for Knicks fans.<\/p>\n

I made my way to the back, looking up at the three giant TVs hanging overhead, all broadcasting the most important basketball of the year in pristine high definition. My friend Marc-Jean peacocked around, talking to strangers as if he\u2019d known them his whole life. \u201cLet\u2019s go Jay!\u201d he yells in my direction, embracing me with a loud dap.<\/p>\n

The NBA\u2019s regular season matters\u2014don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014but come playoff time, there\u2019s a true awakening. It\u2019s Knicks season, and FancyFree is the place to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe come in for one reason: to have drinks and talk shit,\u201d Marc-Jean says.<\/p>\n

Bing Bong<\/p>\n

MY 2010S WERE a rough time to be a Knicks fan\u2014Carmelo Anthony\u2019s game suffered as he got older, Kristaps Porzingis never quite became the star we thought he\u2019d be, and it felt like the team just couldn\u2019t stop stepping on their own feet, over and over and over again. A Knicks fan all of his life, Marc-Jean always came out to watch games with his friends\u2026 and most of the time the team would lose.<\/p>\n

But the curse<\/a> went back further than that. In 2020, when FancyFree opened, the Knicks were in the midst of getting out of a bad era of basketball that had lasted, essentially, for a few decades.<\/p>\n

\"Fancyfree\"Evan Romano<\/p>\n

FancyFree on a normal Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Then, suddenly, additions like Julius Randle and RJ Barrett transformed the team. Head coach Tom Thibodeau brought some much-needed consistency and discipline. The Knicks made it to the playoffs in 2020\u201321, marking the start of the current Knicks resurgence. Today, New York City\u2019s beloved Knickerbockers have finished the regular season with at least 50 wins for three straight years\u2014for the first time in more than 30 years. It\u2019s been great for FancyFree.<\/p>\n

\u201cJalen Brunson was here for Spike Lee\u2019s birthday,\u201d the bar\u2019s owner, Jason Burelle, told me, gesturing toward the team\u2019s star point guard on the TV.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpread Love, It\u2019s the Brooklyn Way.\u201d<\/p>\n

AT HALFTIME OF the first game in the Hawks series, the Knicks nursed a two-point lead. I pulled Marc-Jean aside and we talked while the bar buzzed with suspense. For fans like Marc-Jean, yes, the bar\u2019s existence coincided with the Knicks becoming a quality team, but it also carried added meaning for him because he hails from Brooklyn. FancyFree\u2019s location has always appealed to him.<\/p>\n

As a kid, the Flatbush-raised Marc-Jean was told by his mother not to go to Fort Greene, the same neighborhood Biggie rapped about slinging crack in. But through the years, Fort Greene has become quite cosmopolitan, even down to the very block FancyFree sits on, from the indie bookstore up the block, to the fine dining restaurant next door, to the juggernaut Barclays Center just down the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in the day, you could only go to the city to watch the games. Now, as I get older, having this in Brooklyn is a great feeling,\u201d Marc-Jean told me, when I asked him to explain FancyFree to me. \u201cEverybody wants to come to Fort Greene. It\u2019s a lot of love.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days, the bar\u2019s crowd reflects the changed neighborhood: transplants shout elbow-to-elbow with old-school Bed-Stuy hustlers. That said, it\u2019s still overwhelmingly a place where Knicks fans of color can come together to cheer on their ascendant orange and blue.<\/p>\n

A few weeks prior to the Hawks game, I\u2019d caught up with Burelle. As we sat at one of the back tables, he told me the history of FancyFree. For more than a decade, the bar was an Irish pub and sports bar called Mullanes. During the pandemic, Jason and his business partner, Danny, looking to escape the fog that came along with constantly being inside, bought the bar as a project and began their endeavor.<\/p>\n

\"Fancyfree\"Evan Romano<\/p>\n

FancyFree got particularly packed during a recent Arsenal match.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to keep it a sports bar. There wasn\u2019t anything like it in the neighborhood, and so we wanted to be as purist as possible,\u201d he said. They decided to change the name, but kept the long, spacious features the community had already embraced. Being a short walk from Barclays Center, with its concerts and increasingly popular New York Liberty games<\/a>, didn\u2019t hurt either. \u201cWe ended up maintaining the essence, Jason told me. \u201cBut I think we built more of a community around it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Knicks Nation is not the FancyFree\u2019s only reigning fandom. On a Sunday morning in September 2025, New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani stopped into FancyFree to catch an Arsenal game with Spike Lee<\/a>, also a famed Gooner. Lee, the director of some of the finest American films of all time<\/a> by my estimation, has an office next door.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve known Spike Lee for about 14 years now. He\u2019s a good neighbor of ours, Jason says, speaking in a casual tone about something completely not casual at all. The relationship between the two is part of the bar\u2019s lore: The master filmmaker and iconic Knicks fan held his 69th birthday at Fancy this year. Jeffrey Wright<\/a> and Rosie Perez showed up.<\/p>\n

Knicks in Four, Five, Six\u2026<\/p>\n

THE KNICKERBOCKERS WON that first game of the Hawks series, and would go on to win the whole thing in six. They\u2019ve since swept the following rounds against the Philadelphia 76ers and Cleveland Cavaliers, and, as of press time, have opened up a 2-0 series lead in the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs. As always, the bar continues to play Frank Sinatra\u2019s \u201cNew York, New York\u201d over the sound system after each win.<\/p>\n

The 2026 playoff run has made FancyFree a resounding hotspot. Maybe a little too hot, I found myself thinking, during game three of the Eastern Conference Finals. Stepping inside once again, I had to swim through a crowd of Brunson jerseys to get to the TVs in the back. It was so packed that it was almost distracting, the crowd undulating every minute the game was going. At halftime, I had to step outside and walk down the block for some air. As I returned, I heard the shouts from inside the bar. I opened the door and rejoined the crowd.<\/p>\n

\"Excited<\/p>\n

Jmeka via Tenor<\/p>\n

\"Play\"Video\"Lettermark\"<\/p>\n

Jayson Buford is a writer from New York. He loves the Knicks, cinema, and hip-hop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"5 min read THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE the Knicks were set to tip off against the Atlanta Hawks in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,567,101121,1381,83931,568,9,24,63,67524,101120],"class_list":["post-260015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-1085d203-21be-46f6-b250-e9ef4833a192","tag-displaytype-long-form-article","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-us","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-read_time-6","tag-shorttitle-welcome-to-knicks-fever-hq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260015","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=260015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}