It was a little before midnight on Saturday, and New York City was practically vibrating with pent-up joy. The Knicks had just beaten the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 of the N.B.A. finals, clinching their first championship since 1973.<\/p>\n
But at Doris, a slender, dimly lit bar in Brooklyn, the vibes were funereal.<\/p>\n
The guests packed inside, to be clear, were New Yorkers. And they were basketball fans. But, for better or worse, they shared a small but meaningful idiosyncrasy: They were rooting for the other team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s dangerous out there,\u201d said Sydney Pedraza, 26, an artist living in Greenpoint, laughing. \u201cMy parents were like: \u2018Uber home. We\u2019ll send you money.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Pedraza and her friend Eloise Owen had occupied a booth near the projector beaming the game against a wall, wearing Spurs shirts, bolo ties and leather boots. With the other patrons, they had formed a sleeper cell of Spurs fans in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a different sort of speakeasy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been laughing, because everyone comes to the bar incognito,\u201d Ms. Owen said. \u201cAnd as soon as they get inside, everyone starts peeling the layers off to actually show their gear.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Knicks\u2019 hot streak over the last few weeks has engendered something quite rare for the city: a monocultural touch point, unifying classes, races and creeds across the five boroughs.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s one narrative, anyway. New York is a city of immigrants and transplants that, in calmer times, celebrates its differences, including sports allegiances. Come football season, for example, fans of practically any N.F.L. team can find a bar catering specifically to their needs.<\/p>\n
During these N.B.A. finals, though, that pluralistic ideal largely evaporated, leaving many Spurs-supporting New Yorkers feeling adrift.<\/p>\n
So when Doris announced before the series that it would start showing games \u2014 and provide a generally pro-Spurs environment \u2014 crowds materialized.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe streets are this sea of orange and blue,\u201d said Abi Balingit, 31, a cookbook author and Spurs fan who lives in Greenpoint. \u201cAnd then you enter Doris, and it\u2019s the only place in the city where everyone is wearing silver, black and white.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fans at the bar on Saturday chanted throughout the game. They wore assorted Spurs paraphernalia and sported Spurs tattoos. They booed at the sight of Jalen Brunson \u2014 anywhere else in the city a blasphemous act.<\/p>\n
Doris is in no way a sports bar. It\u2019s a first-date bar, a stop-in-once-a-week bar. It falls somewhere between a fancy dive and a divey cocktail bar, as adept at slinging Jell-O shots as a fine-tuned martini. There is a disco ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve never had a TV here, ever,\u201d said Jasmine Bryant, 26, one of the bartenders.<\/p>\n
Yet from the moment it opened, the bar has displayed the jersey of Manu Gin\u00f3bili, a former San Antonio star, in a centrally positioned shrine. It offers \u201cTexas Tuesday\u201d specials and burns fir balsam incense bricks from the American Southwest.<\/p>\n
Jessica Warner, one of the owners, was raised in San Antonio and attended her first Spurs game as a toddler. She never intended for Doris to have a full-on Texan theme, but elements of home emerged naturally over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI promised somebody, if the Spurs go to the finals, then we can fully own being a San Antonio bar, a safe space in the city to watch the games,\u201d said Ms. Warner, who opened the bar in 2013 with her husband, Jason Andrews. \u201cIt just felt like the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a civic gesture of sorts that left guests on Saturday expressing their appreciation. (Well, not everyone: \u201cNick\u2019s game? Who\u2019s Nick?\u201d one young woman asked while escaping the crush of bodies before tipoff.)<\/p>\n
Sipping a Lone Star beer in a prime spot by the projector was Brian Chan, a software engineer originally from Austin, Texas, who\u2019d heard about Doris after having a less-than-enjoyable time at a different bar earlier in the series. The relief in his voice was plain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to act neutral all through that game,\u201d said Mr. Chan, 36, who lives in Bed-Stuy. \u201cI haven\u2019t really felt like I could openly cheer in any public space.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Warner, 46, the owner, called her hometown \u201cone of the most beautiful cities in the world.\u201d Yet she proclaimed her love, too, for New York.<\/p>\n
\u201cEver since I saw \u2018Muppets Take Manhattan\u2019 when I was 4, or whenever I heard a Paul Simon song, it didn\u2019t matter why or how I would do it, I always knew I\u2019d move to New York one day,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
This internal conflict \u2014 an adoration for hometown and adopted home \u2014 was mirrored by others at the bar on Saturday. Many were happy for Knicks fans, noting how they\u2019ve suffered through fallow years. Many spoke wistfully about a happier time, a few weeks ago, when Knicks and Spurs fans could harmoniously coexist.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil the finals, every bar in New York could also be a Spurs bar,\u201d said Reese Moorman, 21, a San Antonio native living in the East Village.<\/p>\n