You could call it a parade. But really 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.
A dialysis technician from Brownsville, Brooklyn, watched the sun rise over Lower Manhattan, basking in the eerie hush before the festivities erupted. A doorman on Wall Street took the overnight shift so he could secure his spot on the parade route, sporting orange and blue socks under his uniform. A dentist from Long Island stood on Broadway at 6 a.m. wearing an orange-and-blue turban wrapped by his wife, who said she’d waited her whole life for this one day. The film star John Turturro got choked up thinking of Knicks fans who had died before seeing this win.
Never before has New York City had a championship parade for the Knicks. Lower Manhattan’s so-called Canyon of Heroes has turned upside down in celebration before — for the Yankees and for the Giants, for the Liberty and for Winston Churchill, for Nelson Mandela and for the men who walked on the moon. But when the Knicks won their previous championships, more than half a century ago, the city skipped the parades and held more modest celebrations.
Thursday was different, marking a miracle less celestial but no less emotive. It was also serendipitously timed, greeting a city wounded by pandemic losses and isolation, haunted by political disillusionment and division.
The city knows how to gather for hardship and heartbreak. For the Knicks, it reminded itself how to party.
The sound of the morning was giggling, singing, roaring cheers of guttural New-York-or-nowhere pride. The sight was perpetual orange and blue, hands thrusting signs skyward and feet dangling off scaffolding.
There were 2,500 pounds of confetti and quintessentially New York signs (“My therapist told me this day would come”). A couple dressed like newlyweds, with a wedding bouquet, twirled to the beat of a marching band. Children skipping school bounced on street corners, where the normal foot traffic was replaced by revelers basking in faith’s reward.
Ben Stiller fist-pumped. Timothée Chalamet tossed off his hat. Spike Lee waved from a bus rolling down the parade route.
Jalen Brunson looked almost dazed as he rested his arms on the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy, his wife and toddler at his side. When Karl-Anthony Towns toted the trophy into the domed entrance of City Hall, fans let out piercing screams as they reached to lay a hand on its golden surface.
Then there was Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a showman presiding over the spectacle with all the glee of an official who had run on the promise that the city could be more pleasurable — cheaper, of course, but also simply more fun. Of all the bleary-eyed early mornings that Mr. Mamdani signed up for in becoming mayor, surely this was one he couldn’t have daydreamed. He sported his Josh Hart jersey steps from Josh Hart, threw T-shirts into a shrieking crowd, handed over keys to the city, emblazoned with his name, to its new basketball champions. Mr. Mamdani is a true sports fanatic, who promised the crowds outside his City Hall that this wasn’t just the celebration of a hard-driving team, but its hustling, starry-eyed city.
“The Knicks did not just win for New York City, they won like New York City,” Mr. Mamdani said. “What is New York if not your back up against the wall?”
He reflected on the grit of one Knicks player, Jose Alvarado, who was raised in New York housing projects. (Standing inside City Hall, Mr. Alvarado shouted: “Keep going baby, anything is possible, look at me!”)
The team’s captain, Jalen Brunson, also noted the bond between the team and its New York fans, who are just as gritty and demanding as the city that raised them.
“I’m not going to lie, they’re pretty hard critics,” Mr. Brunson said. “But we appreciate it. Or at least I do.”
True to Manhattan form, there were clashes of personality, titans at odds. The Knicks owner, James L. Dolan, who has been sparring with the mayor and police commissioner over the decision to shut down watch parties, took the stage to a round of boos, despite the championship win.
“Look, I don’t need your vote,” Mr. Dolan said. “We’re going to keep working to bring you even better basketball, although it’s hard to imagine that we get much better than this. But we will, right fellas?”
Right. Mostly, the action was far from the steps of City Hall, out on the streets. The street-side pens were full before 8 a.m. Undaunted, New Yorkers jumped atop sanitation trucks, muscled their way up traffic lights, dangled from scaffolding like they were showing off their core strength — anything to get closer to the action. Police implored people to stay on the ground as defiant fans clambered up ladders and steel beams for a better view. Elsewhere, officers swayed to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” and sanitation workers poked their heads out from dump trucks to film the crowds.
Longtime New Yorkers knows what it means to put on a brave face after hurricanes and attacks, bank collapses and mass illness. This was different.
Who knew it was even possible for one crowd this large to sing, shimmy, honk and wave if not in total unison then on some syncopated beat? For hours on Thursday morning, New York City’s favorite half-truth felt real. This little stretch of island really was the center of the universe, or at least that of its hollering, blissed-out residents.
Reporting was contributed by Eryn Davis, Sean Piccoli, Sarah Maslin Nir, Benjamin Oreskes, Miles G. Cohen and Eliza Shapiro.
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