Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at scenes from the parade. Do I need to say more? Do I need to say it was the parade for the Knicks and their N.B.A. championship?
The Fans
A storm of confetti. A gleaming trophy held high. Banners in blue, orange and white over the windows of City Hall. A mayor who rode in a float wearing a Josh Hart jersey and said: “This is our city. This is our team.”
The Knicks’ first-ever championship parade (though it was not their first championship) was ebullient. It was effervescent. It was rollicking. It carried the Knicks up Broadway to City Hall through the storied Canyon of Heroes after passing Bowling Green, which was a parade ground 340 years ago. That was 205 years before basketball was invented and 260 years before the Knicks franchise was established.
Parade-goers like Jean Dales, who attends Brooklyn College and was wearing a Marcus Camby jersey, said they were experiencing history, just as they had experienced history as the Knicks fought their way to the championship. “For the Knicks to win in my senior year,” he said, “it’s good to be alive.”
The Confetti
The cascade of confetti landed on parade-goers’ Knicks T-shirts and jerseys, and on them. “It’s part of the experience,” Shirley Baker of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said after someone lifted a single piece of confetti from her hair.
In all those raised hands were cellphones and cameras, aiming for a photo of the players on their floats. There were a lot of heads and hands to see over: The police estimated that two million people lined the parade route and the surrounding streets. “I saw the mayor with my camera,” said Daniel Wilson, who at 6 feet 6 inches is four inches taller than the Knicks’ All-Star guard Jalen Brunson. “I think I saw KAT” — the center-forward Karl-Anthony Towns — “and Jordan Clarkson. They deserve it. They played hard.”
The Trophy
It depicts a basketball over a hoop and a basket. It weighs 29 pounds, a pound and a half more than a bar of solid gold. Its official name is the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy. Brunson had possession of it on the way to City Hall. When he wasn’t walking in the street, holding it close enough for fans to touch it from behind the barricades, he was balancing it as he stood with his wife, Dr. Ali Marks Brunson, and their daughter, Jordyn James Brunson.
The Heat
Crowds in offices where it was cool watched the crowds on the streets, where it was not. The Fire Department said that it had treated 61 people at or near the parade, mostly for ailments like heat exhaustion and asthma. Officials said that 30 had been taken to hospitals. The police said they had taken 13 people into custody and had made 10 arrests on charges that included assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstruction.
The High
Their cheers spread like a roar with what my colleague Emma Goldberg called a guttural New-York-or-nowhere pride. They carried signs: “My therapist told me this day would come,” one said. They clambered on scaffolding, dangling over the street, the better to see their team. They stood on orange-and-white barriers in the streets. And they treated sidewalk scaffolding like jungle gyms on a playground, exuberance carrying them high.
Weather
Today will be mostly cloudy, and then will gradually become sunny, with a high near 84. Expect clear skies and a low near 66 tonight.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended (Juneteenth).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The Knicks did not just win for New York City — they won like New York City. What is New York if not your back up against the wall?” — Mayor Zohran Mamdani addressing the crowd outside of City Hall after the Knicks’ parade.
In Case You Missed It: Knicks Championship
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A reason to celebrate: The Knicks’ ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes attracted legions of fans celebrating the team’s first championship in 53 years. It was a jubilee, rapture, pure silliness, a weepy rebirth for the thousands of New Yorkers who needed a reason to believe and found it in their hometown team.
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A first for the Knicks: Though this is the Knicks’ third N.B.A. championship, they have never been honored with a ticker-tape parade until now, and a former Knick named John Shove Palmer — better known as Bud — is partly to blame. The 1970 and 1973 champions were honored with more modest celebration, as parades were considered overdone in the ’70s.
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A trip to Washington: The Knicks have accepted an invitation to visit the White House to celebrate their championship win, James Dolan, the team’s owner, said in a radio interview. The Knicks would be the first N.B.A. team to visit the White House with President Trump in office.
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Ticker-tape parades are not school holidays: In the past, many students skipped school to cheer on sports teams at victory parades. This time, Mayor Zohran Mamdani encouraged students to stay in school, particularly because it was also the same day as the Regents exams.
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Getting paid to wait in line: Samuel Powell, channeling the entrepreneurial New Yorker spirit, was among those who were being paid to wait in line to secure a good view for other people to watch the Knicks parade. He was enlisted for about $600, starting at midnight until about 7 a.m.
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Game 5 through a photographer’s lens: While fans watched their team, José A. Alvarado Jr. watched the crowd. He ducked, shimmied and shuffled through traffic to get a shot.
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A baby-naming boom inspired by Knicks players: Experts predict that a baby-naming boom inspired by the players is most likely on the way because of the team’s historic win, the likability of the players and the unity the city showed in supporting the team.
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Jumping on the Knicks bandwagon: During the Knicks’ championship run, companies, including some with no ties to New York or basketball, began attaching themselves to the team’s brand — posting memes, changing their avatars to Knicks blue and orange, and cheering the team in their captions.
Out of Retirement
There is perhaps no person more celebrated in Knicks lore than Patrick Ewing, the big man who embodied the 1990s Knicks’ bruising style of basketball and helped bring the team within one win of an N.B.A. title.
Since the Knicks retired Ewing’s jersey in 2003, no player has worn his old number, 33. But during Thursday’s parade, as banners were hung outside City Hall to honor the current team, Ewing’s No. 33 was featured on the jersey of a current player, Dillon Jones, who played sparingly this year.
The error came about because Jones’s number was listed as No. 33 on the team’s online roster, according to a spokesman for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, even though Jones wore the No. 1 jersey in all seven games he played this season.
Some Knicks fans viewed the error as a slight by Mamdani’s administration toward Ewing, who now works as a “basketball ambassador” for the team.
“33 IS RETIRED,” read one post from a popular Knicks fan account on X. “IT’S PATRICK EWING’S.”
It was unclear whether Ewing knew about the mix-up. Standing on the second floor of City Hall on Thursday, he said watching this team’s championship victory was “special.”
“It was a great joy,” he said.
METROPOLITAN diary
The Knicks, a poem
This poem originally ran in 2013.
Dear Diary:
My beloved New York Knickerbockers, Whom I do adore. You have the kind of talent, Not bought in any store. You make LeBron quiver, And Kobe breaks into a sweat. Melo buries a three, Like nobody is as wet. J.R. hits a game-winner, And stares you in the eye, Every time he does this, You should just say goodbye. When Raymond throws an alley-oop And Tyson slams it home, They do this almost every night, It chills you to the bone. When J. Kidd steals the ball from you It jumps right out of your hand, He shoots a three and nails it, And your momentum is not grand. When Shump throws a pass to you, It’ll burn off both your hands. He’ll also steal the ball from you, And do a creative jam.
— Kevin Welch
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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