{"id":270860,"date":"2026-06-18T14:29:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T14:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/270860\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T14:29:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T14:29:31","slug":"new-york-turns-out-in-force-for-knicks-first-championship-parade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/270860\/","title":{"rendered":"New York turns out in force for Knicks’ first championship parade"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 New York is celebrating the Knicks in classic style Thursday, throwing a ticker-tape parade for the team that brought home the NBA championship<\/a> longed for by generations of fans. <\/p>\n

The Knicks\u2019 victory \u2014 after a 53-year drought \u2014 has electrified New Yorkers<\/a>. City police said all the viewing pens along the route were full less than three hours before the procession, packed by thousands of fans who flooded into lower Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Still, they kept streaming into the area on crammed subways, looking to get as close as they could or find any elevated spot from which to catch a glimpse. <\/p>\n

Terrell Emerson, a chef who grew up in Queens before leaving New York, said he\u2019d driven from Maryland with his daughter Madison \u2013 named in honor of the Knicks home arena, Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n AP AUDIO: New York Knicks parade brings generations of fans into the streets\n <\/p>\n

In an AP interview, fan Angel Oliva, a high school student, says he arrived at 3am and was still unable to get a good spot because of all the chaos and checkpoints, but is just grateful to be near City Hall where the ceremony takes place.<\/p>\n

Madison, beaming, held a handwritten sign announcing she\u2019d skipped her fifth-grade graduation to be in attendance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been 53 years \u2014 come on. That was a no-brainer,\u201d Emerson said. <\/p>\n

The parade is set to start at 10 a.m. Thursday near Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan and head up Broadway on the skyscraper-flanked route dubbed the \u201cCanyon of Heroes.\u201d The procession is to end at City Hall, where the players are to get another traditional tribute: keys to the city.<\/p>\n

Knicks legends Walt \u201cClyde\u201d Frazier \u2014 a member of the \u201970s champion teams \u2014 and Patrick Ewing are expected to participate in the parade, according to a person familiar with the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the details before they were publicly announced. The person said Mike Breen, the Knicks\u2019 play-by-play announcer on MSG Network, was set to emcee the City Hall ceremony.<\/p>\n

Alicia Keys<\/a>, the singer who collaborated with Jay-Z<\/a> on the New York-loving 2009 hit \u201cEmpire State of Mind,\u201d has been tapped to perform. <\/p>\n

\u201cHow could I not?\u201d Keys said Wednesday in a social media video that featured her on the phone with Knicks forward OG Anunoby<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The mere fact that the parade is happening is historic in itself. Although the Knicks won the championship twice in the 1970s, the city didn\u2019t host a parade for them<\/a> either time. Then-Mayor John Lindsay had cut down on ticker-tape extravaganzas for financial and other reasons, and he instead honored the Knicks at a 1970 reception at the mayoral mansion and a jam-packed 1973 ceremony outside City Hall. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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This time, the city is going all out. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be performances, there will be New Yorkers, there will be the team and there will be history,\u201d Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> said Monday.<\/p>\n

Police plan to deploy 10,000 officers to secure the event, which follows ebullient but sometimes chaotic street celebrations<\/a> and some violence during the Knicks\u2019 run to victory<\/a> over the San Antonio Spurs. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe want people to enjoy this moment,\u201d Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a planning meeting Wednesday, \u201cbut public safety comes first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some 650 sanitation workers have been assigned to clean up what could be tens of thousands of pounds (kilograms) of debris, if recent history is any guide.<\/p>\n

Ticker-tape parades derive their name from the narrow strips of paper used by telegraph-era \u201cstock ticker\u201d machines. New York brokerage firm workers took to tossing the paper out their office windows during parades in the late 19th century, adding a swirling aerial spectacle to the festivities. <\/p>\n

Over the years, especially up to the mid-1960s, the city rolled out ticker-tape parades to honor visiting foreign leaders, mark historic anniversaries and hail feats in aviation, war, sports, music, space travel and more. <\/p>\n

The Knicks\u2019 parade will be the 210th, and it comes after a ticker-tape bash for the WNBA\u2019s New York Liberty<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz in New York and AP Basketball Writer Brian Mahoney in Southampton, New York, contributed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 New York is celebrating the Knicks in classic style Thursday, throwing a ticker-tape parade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[28627,2222,6654,157,417,15240,5302,232,97337,21,4583,1066,9,24,1104,56,63,65,64,58290,81743,319,421,82],"class_list":["post-270860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-alicia-keys","tag-connecticut","tag-ct-state-wire","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-jay-z","tag-jessica-tisch","tag-lifestyle","tag-mike-breen","tag-nba","tag-nba-basketball","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-o-g-anunoby","tag-patrick-ewing","tag-sports","tag-u-s-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270860","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=270860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}