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.
But at Doris, a slender, dimly lit bar in Brooklyn, the vibes were funereal.
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.
“It’s dangerous out there,” said Sydney Pedraza, 26, an artist living in Greenpoint, laughing. “My parents were like: ‘Uber home. We’ll send you money.’”
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.
“We’ve been laughing, because everyone comes to the bar incognito,” Ms. Owen said. “And as soon as they get inside, everyone starts peeling the layers off to actually show their gear.”
The Knicks’ 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.
That’s 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.
During these N.B.A. finals, though, that pluralistic ideal largely evaporated, leaving many Spurs-supporting New Yorkers feeling adrift.
So when Doris announced before the series that it would start showing games — and provide a generally pro-Spurs environment — crowds materialized.
“The streets are this sea of orange and blue,” said Abi Balingit, 31, a cookbook author and Spurs fan who lives in Greenpoint. “And then you enter Doris, and it’s the only place in the city where everyone is wearing silver, black and white.”
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 — anywhere else in the city a blasphemous act.
Doris is in no way a sports bar. It’s 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.
“We’ve never had a TV here, ever,” said Jasmine Bryant, 26, one of the bartenders.
Yet from the moment it opened, the bar has displayed the jersey of Manu Ginóbili, a former San Antonio star, in a centrally positioned shrine. It offers “Texas Tuesday” specials and burns fir balsam incense bricks from the American Southwest.
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.
“I 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,” said Ms. Warner, who opened the bar in 2013 with her husband, Jason Andrews. “It just felt like the right thing to do.”
It was a civic gesture of sorts that left guests on Saturday expressing their appreciation. (Well, not everyone: “Nick’s game? Who’s Nick?” one young woman asked while escaping the crush of bodies before tipoff.)
Sipping a Lone Star beer in a prime spot by the projector was Brian Chan, a software engineer originally from Austin, Texas, who’d 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.
“I had to act neutral all through that game,” said Mr. Chan, 36, who lives in Bed-Stuy. “I haven’t really felt like I could openly cheer in any public space.”
Ms. Warner, 46, the owner, called her hometown “one of the most beautiful cities in the world.” Yet she proclaimed her love, too, for New York.
“Ever since I saw ‘Muppets Take Manhattan’ when I was 4, or whenever I heard a Paul Simon song, it didn’t matter why or how I would do it, I always knew I’d move to New York one day,” she said.
This internal conflict — an adoration for hometown and adopted home — was mirrored by others at the bar on Saturday. Many were happy for Knicks fans, noting how they’ve suffered through fallow years. Many spoke wistfully about a happier time, a few weeks ago, when Knicks and Spurs fans could harmoniously coexist.
“Until the finals, every bar in New York could also be a Spurs bar,” said Reese Moorman, 21, a San Antonio native living in the East Village.
But the tenor changed. Friends became enemies. Ms. Moorman, in response, started tracking Spurs-friendly spaces on an Instagram account. She did not find many: a Tex-Mex restaurant in the East Village showing games during dinner, a bar in Williamsburg that turned out to be more Spurs-tolerant than Spurs-focused.
Doris, by default, became the hub for San Antonio fans.
“I’ve seen so many people from high school,” Ms. Moorman said.
The fans chanted “Defense!” as the game wound to a tense finish. They booed when the Knicks went to the foul line, booed a commercial featuring Knicks players, booed the sight of Timothée Chalamet.
But it was to no avail. The Knicks established a late lead and held it, setting off raucous celebrations just outside the door and all around the city.
In Doris, it was quiet. Someone yelled about being back at the bar next year. There was some confusion about what to do next. Mr. Chan mused about possibly seeing the celebrations outside. Others declared they were going home.
And then, in true New York fashion, the vibe at the bar shifted.
A D.J. set up behind some turntables, and “Winner Takes It All,” by ABBA, began playing over the speakers. The disco ball began to spin. Doris was hosting a long-planned party for Pride Month, and it kicked off at the final buzzer.
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