Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at how a couple of the Knicks legends feel about the team’s success. We’ll also find out about which two political leaders have a ticket to one of the finals at Madison Square Garden.
The Knicks have been good for a few years. But they haven’t been this good in a generation. And it’s turning New York City upside down.
For the first time since 1999, the Knicks are in the N.B.A. finals, facing off against the San Antonio Spurs. New York won Game 1 on Wednesday night in a thriller that made it hard for one Knicks legend to stay seated.
Bill Bradley, who won two championships with the Knicks in the 1970s, clutched the TV remote, as Jalen Brunson, the team’s electric point guard, took control of the game in the fourth quarter. Bradley was watching the game with my colleague Matt Flegenheimer.
Bradley “edged forward in his chair, running on Fanta and popcorn and Swiss chocolate, extending both arms toward the television like a sixth Knicks defender,” Matt reported.
For another Knicks legend, the team’s success has been bittersweet.
Charles Oakley, who embodied the team’s ’90s toughness, has mostly had to cheer (or jeer) the team from afar for the past decade. He was arrested and escorted out of Madison Square Garden in February 2017 after an altercation with security guards. He sued the team’s owner, James Dolan, and was briefly barred from the arena but is allowed to go to games even as his lawsuit continues. But will he?
“It’s a situation that should have been solved a long time ago from the guy who owns the team,” Oakley said, according to my colleagues Tania Ganguli and Santul Nerkar.
The second game of the best-of-seven finals series is tonight in San Antonio, but Game 3 is set for Monday at the Garden. Oakley said he had no plans to be there.
But these two people do: Mayor Zohran Mamdani and President Trump.
It’s one of the hottest tickets in the city, and the mayor is planning to pay for one himself, saying he “will be in a very different section” from the president, according to my colleagues Dana Rubinstein, Jonah E. Bromwich and Tyler Pager.
The president is expected to be in a suite, they reported.
Mamdani and Trump have been friendly at times, but there are no known plans for them to meet up at the game.
Weather
It will be a sunny day today with a high near 90. The sky will be cloudy tonight, as temperatures drop near 72.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until June 19 (Juneteenth).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Let me be clear: Absolutely no one is above the law. We will hold law enforcement accountable when they abuse the tremendous position of public trust that they occupy and choose to break the law.” — Jennifer Davenport, New Jersey attorney general, on a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office who is accused of stealing a photojournalist’s camera equipment.
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METROPOLITAN diary
Cab chatter
Dear Diary:
In 2015, my then husband and I visited New York City for the first time.
After getting a cab at LaGuardia to go to our hotel, my husband, a loquacious sort, tried to chat up the driver about where he was from, how many fares he picked up in a day and so on.
The driver never answered with more than two or three words.
When we got out at our hotel, I tried to apologize for my husband’s extreme chattiness.
“Don’t worry, Madam,” the driver said. “Texans always talk too much. We never listen.”
— Nancy Burks
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. — S.L.
Hannah Fidelman and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post Getting Ready for the Next Big Game at the Garden appeared first on New York Times.
