It’s a beloved New York pastime to divide New Yorkers into types. There are “real New Yorkers” and posers, New Yorkers who toast their bagels and those who don’t, Carries and Samanthas, die-hard Knicks fans and bandwagon ones.
The N.B.A. finals have revealed another city typology. There are devil-may-care fans who celebrate wins as they come, and there are the superstitious ones who at every turn think the Knicks are just one fate-tempting move away from disaster.
Count State Senator Zellnor Myrie, a Knicks fan, among the superstitious. He eschews watch parties and won’t buy any new Knicks gear until after the championship, fearing accidentally jinxing his team. “There is something pretty sacrosanct about making predictions,” Mr. Myrie said. “There’s too much built-in trauma to do anything that might tip the supernatural scales.”
Here’s the thing about sports superstitions: They can make even a whirlwind, party-fueled N.B.A. finals run feel less like jubilee and more like psychological torment. In New York City — home to some 8.6 million people with 860 million neuroses — the closer the Knicks are to victory, the more people succumb to magical thinking.
It’s a city of control freaks, a place that attracts people who want to seize their destinies, high rents and unaffordable meals be damned. So, with the dangling promise of a championship victory, fans are leaving nothing to fate. Some turn their backs to the television instead of watching; many wear the same sweaty shirt or hat through game after game.
As anyone who has seen “The Devil Wears Prada” or “Girls” can attest, there is something intrinsically New York about chasing greatness while detesting every single second along the way.
Tara Gonzalez, 34, watched her grandmother place a photograph of Jalen Brunson on the altar in her home in Astoria, Queens. Mr. Brunson was situated near the rosaries. Every day, Ms. Gonzalez’s grandmother lights a candle and says a prayer for him. Who would Ms. Gonzalez, a native New Yorker, be to poo-poo it? So, when she’s watching the games with her friends, she insists they go to the same bar each time, stand in the same positions and wear the same shirts.
“Every single time there’s going to be a game, I’m sick to my stomach,” she said. “I’m definitely not the person who’s like, ‘They’re going to win, they’re going to sweep.’”
Will Schube, not technically a New Yorker though his parents are, is the type of obsessive Knicks fan who profoundly believes that the team won Game 4 because he changed his shirt at halftime. He was wearing a Knicks shirt when they lost in Game 3, decided not to wear one for Game 4 and then changed his mind when they were down 29 points.
There is complicated choreography involved in sports superstition. Much as one might avoid talking about a pregnancy until there’s a baby, there’s a certain type of fan, including Mr. Schube, who would rather take a yearlong vow of silence than say something like “Knicks in five.”
“Hate it, hate it, hate it — I despise it,” Mr. Schube said of the people declaring that the Knicks will win the championship in five games. “I would happily take Knicks in seven, I would take Knicks in six, and I don’t like the presumption of saying it because it makes me sick and nervous.”
“This interview makes me nervous,” Mr. Schube added. “It makes me really uncomfortable this article is going to run before the finals are over.”
Paul Barnes, 29, also a lifelong Knicks fan, was watching Game 4 with friends on the Upper East Side, and he noticed that the Knicks seemed to be scoring more when he played with the blue and orange paper decorations hanging on the wall of the bar. So Mr. Barnes kept touching the decorations, feeling a sense of obligation to the team.
“It started to get in my head a little bit,” Mr. Barnes said. “We were like, if we stop, they might stop coming back.”
New Yorkers may be known for their self assurance, and that extends to fandom. But for fans like Mr. Barnes, that can be tempered by reality: The Knicks won their last title in 1973, well before Mr. Barnes was born. The New York Rangers, who also play in Madison Square Garden, once went 54 years between titles, and are now on a 32-year run without a championship. And then there are the Mets, whose last title was in 1986.
Mr. Barnes acknowledged spending a lot of his life thinking he’d never see the Knicks play basketball in June, bringing a sense of disbelief that softens his anxiety about the games. “It feels like we’re playing with house money,” he said. “Even if they were to lose, I can’t believe we’re actually here.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has exercised a bit less restraint than some of the Knicks’ more tormented fans. True to his celebratory nature, he is taking every opportunity to wax poetic about a festive moment in the city. He has posted “Knicks in 5” on X. Weeks ago, he put plywood cutouts of members of the team in City Hall.
Mr. Mamdani said, though, that during the games themselves, he gets antsy — even superstitious — when the team is down. “If the game is going well, I don’t move a muscle,” Mr. Mamdani said on Thursday. “If things are going south, I’m moving — maybe to another bar, or at least another seat in the living room.”
Jason Santiago, who works as a doorman on the Upper West Side, said that, as a Knicks fan for more than 20 years, he felt as if he had to embrace the thrill of this moment — a shocking display of well-adjusted psychology in a city not so known for that posture. Mr. Santiago said he prayed for the best, and found the ride exhilarating.
“Even making it this far feels like a win for me,” Mr. Santiago said. “They’re doing what I pictured them doing when I was a kid.”
Spike Lee, for his part, said he wouldn’t even entertain the idea of talking about the N.B.A. finals until his beloved Knicks made it all the way to the finish. “I’m Not Doing Anymore Interviews Until We Win,” he wrote in a text. “Thanks.”
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