It all started with an unexpected late-night phone call delivering some much-needed good news. I was coming back from visiting my dad, who was fresh off a debilitating car accident that cost him five broken bones and a sternum in the process. Luckily, despite the laborious rehab, he was quickly en route to a full recovery, but I was still desperate for a pick-me-up, and that’s just what came. The phone call was from my godbrother, the kind of Knicks fan whose mood is dictated almost exclusively by the team’s result. Godbrother sounds like an homage to The Sopranos, but he’s the son of my godparents, and we grew up together on account of the close bond between our parents.
“What are you doing tomorrow night?” he asked.
“What do you think, dick? I’m watching the game.”
“Well, you’re going to be watching it with me in the Garden.”
My godbrother had managed to secure tickets for us both in the nosebleeds, an incredibly gracious gesture that almost brought me to tears, until what he said afterward actually did.
“Are you sure, man? This is so much money, I feel bad,” I said.
“What’s the point of working my tail off to make this money if I don’t spend it with the people I love watching what I enjoy most?” he confided.
I was going to game four of the NBA Finals and I could barely contain my excitement. I’d been anticipating this moment for most of my life. For context, I’m a die-hard fan, to the point where I’ve become a pariah to some in my own building for my late-night Knicks hollering. I’m so synonymous with the Knicks, and renowned for watching all 82 games plus preseason and postseason, that the doorman in the building next to mine crosses over and watches the games outside of my first-floor window and gives me grief when I’m out of town and it isn’t on.
Although he’s more than four years older, my godbrother and I both became fans at the same time, during the 1994 final run, an event I still remember watching with rapt attention at the ripe old age of five huddled in our family living room. In classic New York Knicks fashion, that series was a mixed bag, marred by the O. J. Simpson car chase that would cut in and out during a momentous fifth Finals game, the subject of more than its fair share of documentaries and series.
My godbrother and I have been close friends for years, with a shared affinity for the team sustaining our bond. And this year it all reached a fever pitch, when something we could only ever utter as a late-night whisper morphed into a real-life possibility. The New York Knicks — yes, the butt of every basketball joke, roundly mocked even in Disney films (see Soul for reference) — had found themselves in a winning position in an NBA Finals. It had been 53 years in the making, and all of my life thus far, and now the oddsmakers said it was likely bound to happen.
Try getting either of us to believe it, though. We had witnessed too much heartbreak to cling to any faith, the setbacks and doldrums too numerous to enumerate. Just take the Indiana Pacers as one culprit, for example, home to two iconic villains. Andreas and I had watched Reggie Miller score eight points in mere seconds at the end of a crucial playoff game and run around the court staring down Spike Lee with the choke symbol, only to witness another Pacer recreate the moment again last year when Tyrese Haliburton’s shot in the waning milliseconds of Eastern Conference Finals Game 1 hit the rim and skyrocketed into outer space before falling deftly into the cup at the buzzer. The sting from these episodes led to veritable trauma on both our parts, and the sight of either of those arch-nemeses could set us off.
This year we had been glued to the screen as always, but we had missed most of the playoff run in person, not able or willing to fork over the insane prices to see them play, which rose in direct proportion to their increasingly stellar play as each round progressed. They were on a seemingly never-ending hot streak that had seen them post the highest point differential in the history of the NBA over a 13-game stretch. Neither of us were accustomed to feelings of joy and exuberance, so we waited with bated breath for the inevitable shoe to drop.
And drop it did when President Donald Trump decided to make an appearance at the Garden and stop the run of good feelings in its tracks. All of this magic was sullied during the game, as the Knicks wilted under the glare of the intrusive Commander in Chief’s presence, and their string of wins came crashing to a close. For many, it was a surprise to learn that the President was a Knicks fan, but I had a distant memory to back it up. A decade or more before, during the Knicks’ doldrums, I had a ticket close to the court alongside my aunt, and we sat behind the then-Apprentice star. My aunt was enamored with Mike Dunleavy, a player then on the Milwaukee Bucks, and she frantically tried to snap a photo of him. Trump instinctively turned around, saying, “I’m happy to pose if you’d like,” to which my aunt replied, “I’m not taking your photo. I’m trying to take one of the handsome player in front of you.”
Fan or not, Trump wreaked havoc on the city and on the team. His appearance meant fans were required to arrive more than two hours before tip-off to maneuver through security reminiscent of the first few days in the immediate aftermath of September 11th. The Knicks, already facing acute pressure, were now forced to absorb even more, and this was blatantly obvious as their pace ground to a halt and the Spurs played with an unbridled freedom that kept the home team always a step behind. The crowd itself, perhaps drained from the pregame screening and proceedings, also ran out of gas, and the Knicks sputtered in the second half without their cheerleaders egging them on.
It’s been so easy to cheer for this group of guys. To be fair, I’d cheer for five morally bankrupt reprobates if they donned Knicks gear, but this team is made up of the complete opposite. In an era of personal brands, there’s an element of selflessness among this squad that’s hard to quantify. Perhaps it’s because the culture has been imported from Jay Wright’s vaunted Villanova squad, or it stems from the captain, Jalen Brunson, turning down nine figures to get his friends in the door. Regardless, it’s a rarity to see a group so assured and content in their assumed roles. All of these guys have monikers that mean something to the fabric of the city, ranging from Grand Theft Alvarado to the Big Bodega to Josh “Hart of the Team.”
All of them have classic Hollywood underdog appeal. Karl-Anthony Towns lost his mom in the first few harrowing weeks of Covid. Jalen Brunson was dismissed for being too short, too little, and too slow at seemingly every turn. Josh Hart pulled himself up by his bootstraps and rebounds at a rate that doesn’t seem anatomically possible at his height. Although second-round draft picks, Mitchell Robinson gobbles up offensive rebounds at a league-leading rate, and Deuce McBride rains down high-arcing threes. Landry Shamet was picked up off the scrap heap. Mikal Bridges was a redshirt in college who faced intense ire and scrutiny for costing the Knicks several future picks in his swap. Alvarado, although pint-sized, made his name for a bait-and-switch backcourt steal that had rarely, if ever, been attempted. He also played for New York’s own Christ the King High School. I was unfortunately all too familiar with them; my high school basketball team, which I thought was talented, was trounced by Christ the King, losing by more than 40 points on their court. And then there was OG Anunoby, an immigrant who lost his draft position after enduring a devastating knee injury on the same exact play he would become iconic for — but that comes later.
I managed to make it through throngs of people and settle into my seats two hours early, only to watch the Knicks get off to a lethargic start. Karl-Anthony Towns quickly got into foul trouble, and the Knicks came apart at the seams. Victor Wembanyama, who looks even more gargantuan in person, was off to an imperious start, and the rest of the Spurs took the Knicks completely out of their games. Wembanyama even mocked Mitchell Robinson about “getting inside his head” amidst a streak where the Knicks couldn’t find the basket if their lives depended on it.
As the evening went from bad to worse, the Knicks fell behind by 27 points at halftime. I was angsty but not so much as my godbrother who looked on the brink of a psychological breakdown. I remember the moment. I had queried ChatGPT on what the greatest NBA playoff comeback was, only to discover it was 27 points, and that wasn’t even the finals, where the lights were brightest and the stakes highest.
The Knicks started the third quarter at one point down by 29. My godbrother was frantically rearranging our seating position in order to get a more propitious result. And yet, none came. The case was closed, the game was now in the books, and the momentum had returned to San Antonio, who just had to win their remaining home games to close this series out. The Knicks’ dreams, I thought, were extinguished.
Maybe it was Trump rearing his ugly head to tip the balance and maintain the curse, or maybe a red-hot team had simply fallen back down to earth after playing out of their minds. Regardless, the wait had begun again for more anguish, more heartbreak, and desperate years of waiting for what savior would come next.
Who could’ve guessed that two saviors existed in that very building, and both played on the Knicks?
I noticed that, despite the obvious impulse to cut and run, the entire crowd remained and stayed engaged. The Knicks, though obviously dismayed, continued to feed on it. As always, Jalen Brunson kept the team alive with a dogged will to score the basketball. It was a level of determination that would put all but Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant to shame. He simply refused to wilt and kept shooting, even when the shots wouldn’t fall and some doubt had to set in. Not for Brunson, as he waited patiently until the rest of the team were fueled by his determination and picked up the pace. The first to join him in the hunt was OG Anunoby, the reliable silent assassin, who was poised for his big moment.
The Knicks had begun to cut the lead down, but it still felt implausible at best. With more than nine minutes left, the game hung in the balance. And here came New York-born-and-raised Jose Alvarado, a midseason acquisition from the New Orleans Pelicans who had seen his minutes diminish as the playoffs wore on. He hopped off the bench and made his presence felt instantly. While Brunson was on an island, swarmed by Spurs defenders, the Knicks needed another playmaker with adept ball-handling and playmaking skills who could get downhill and exploit the advantages yielded from trapping Brunson. And exploit Alvarado did, with a nifty spin move, a big late three, and incredible swarming defense that made the opposing guards feel like they were a few miles north at Rikers Island. He was yet another pugnacious Knick who embodied New York grit but paired it with a real, indelible passion for the game itself.
Dare I say it, the win now all of a sudden felt within reach. A game that had been measured as a 99.6% Spurs guaranteed victory could now morph into the most unlikely comeback in sports history. I was so accustomed to heartbreak that even as the team stormed back, I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Larry David summed it up perfectly: “Great things don’t happen when I’m in the stadium, and certainly not for my New York Knicks.” The franchise has been through a lifetime of bad bounces, bad calls, and bad decisions. And then, like clockwork after a rampaging comeback, fate seemed to intervene once more on command.
Josh Hart comes into an intercepted errant pass and has a breakaway fast break. He soars down the court for what should be a slam. Just as he’s about to rise up, he senses he’s taken a step too far and awkwardly blows the dunk. To make matters worse, a few plays later, he compounds the mistake by fouling Castle on a rebound he should’ve blocked him out on. Now I was seething. Did we really manage to storm all the way back just for a few blunders to make it a painful exercise in futility? A dull whimper to conclude history’s most absurd response? I tried to yell, to panic, but my voice was shot and my energy sapped.
Sitting next to me was a 25-year-old from Barcelona who had become a Knicks fan randomly back in 2010 when the Knicks signed Amar’e Stoudemire. He’d stay up late or get up super early for every Knicks game in Barcelona for years, even during the lost years when the Knicks struggled to string wins together. When the Knicks made the Finals, he decided to book a flight to the U.S. for the first time, take most of his allotted time off work, use much of his savings, and buy a ticket to the game. I had no right whatsoever to complain if this team didn’t win. This young man, on the other hand, had every right to be mad. I turned to him and said, “They’re going to do this for you.” I wasn’t confident in the slightest but fate had to swing our way at some point.
With that, much of the stress left my body, and I came to the crazy conclusion that the Knicks might actually pull this off. And that’s where OG Anunoby decided to enter the chat and pull off one of the greatest plays in NBA history. After a botched layup by Brunson led to a fast break for De’Aaron Fox, Anunoby ran the length of the court and blocked him with less than 15 seconds on the clock. Then, on the ensuing possession, he watched as Brunson launched a deep three-pointer, took off toward the cup at breakneck speed, leaped into the air, and deftly touched the ball home for the one-point lead. The play has been replayed, reviewed, slowed down, sped up and frozen, and yet it still boggles the mind. It was eerily redolent of the last basket in Space Jam when His Airness stretched his arm in a cartoonish way to drop the ball in among the Monstars to win it at the horn. The crowd erupted into such delirium that it was almost hard for the referee to maintain control of the game. I’ve seen footage of the seats actually shaking when Larry Johnson hit that four-point play in 1999 and this was no less dramatic. In the last second, on a broken out-of-bounds pass, the Knicks hung on to edge out the greatest comeback in NBA playoff history, to the overwhelming delight of the crowd. And that’s where this gets even crazier. The crowd was so stupefied, so used to being browbeaten by this franchise, that nobody left the arena. Even the guards, who usually try to hurry the crowds out, stayed put. The arena erupted into a veritable party, with the DJ playing classic hits and everyone in the crowd making the rounds to high-five strangers. I swapped WhatsApp numbers with the fellow Knick lunatic from Spain and stared at a sea of joyous faces, still unable to fully process what just transpired.
After what felt like an hour, the excitement spilled out into the streets, where it went from jubilation to chaos. Now it’s become the stuff of legends. A 99.6% chance that seemingly goes awry. Mayor Zohran Mamdani put it so eloquently in his triumphant speech before a raucous crowd at City Hall. It’s the first time New York has coalesced around something in a long time that wasn’t an existential threat or a terrible tragedy. The feelings of euphoria are impossible to convey. The game was the final death knell as New York went on to win the series clincher in another massive comeback in San Antonio.
We all grew up playing ball on the streets, pretending we could be the one who makes the last shot or propels our team to victory. OG Anunoby actually accomplished it. I once had my chance in middle school to make my mark, and I missed both free throws to blow the game. Deaths, heartbreaks, and personal failures have never matched the feelings of losing a game and being the culprit. Those feelings never fade.
Feeding off the win, pumping with adrenaline, imbued with a rush to make my own highlight, I could literally feel the penchant for basketball pouring out of me. I had to get to a local basketball court to release that valve. There, I bumped into an acquaintance who recognized me at the game. I was sitting in the nosebleeds and couldn’t comprehend how I would’ve been spotted. Was I on the jumbotron? On TV? I wondered.
“Nope, you went viral. You didn’t see it?”
I was shuddering with fear. What could I have done to merit a viral video during the game? He pulled up the video — House of Highlights, a basketball landing page with over 50 million followers — and there I am, in a video seen by over two million, agitated, stressed, downright panicky as the Knicks fall behind by a seemingly unsurpassable 27 points. I remember the moment. I remember the panic. I’ll never forget the unlikely response.
I wrestle with what truly constitutes a work of art, but as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart ruled in the 1964 obscenity case, “You know it when you see it.” This one had all of the makings of a great bingeable series, as well as much of the anguish and the sheer rush at its culmination. It reminded me of seeing The Sixth Sense and not being able to get up from my seat, surrounded by a sea of strangers equally unable to rise from theirs.
The parade that followed offered a level of camaraderie that was palpable. Many of the people there were unabashed fans, while some could only name one Knick and that’s only because they had just seen The Devil Wears Prada 2. And yet, after all of the suffering, the bandwagon fans were more than welcome aboard to fill in amongst those who had been on an altogether different odyssey. Spike Lee, a longer-suffering Knicks fan than I, who had spent over 10 million dollars on Knicks tickets during his lifetime and witnessed the parade firsthand, felt that “seeing all that diversity is beautiful and something he’ll never forget.” I noticed also, as we were leaving the arena, that race, class, and religion faded into the ether.
Sports has often found itself at the intersection of politics and culture. With the looming appearance of Trump intruding on game three, in concert with the frosty reception between billionaire owner James Dolan and Mamdani, a democratic socialist, at the otherwise triumphant parade, politics can’t help but intercede. And yet, amidst the obvious divide, it was a city, teeming with orange and blue paraphernalia, united around something unexpected and beautiful. OG’s soaring through the air to tap that ball through the hoop was the perfect denouement to a story that has captured all of our imaginations.
And yet, while the story was set there, this wasn’t just a New York story. The NBA Finals were the most watched since the GOAT, Michael Jordan, retired from the Chicago Bulls in 1998. They’re now even selling apparel with the scoreboard across the chest that reads 81 to 52 with 9 minutes and 27 seconds left. Fittingly, that was the exact moment when all hope drained out of my body — and the exact moment that made me go viral. My disconcerted appearance is the perfect encapsulation of what it means to be a New York Knicks fan. What this city has experienced in the last few weeks is something else entirely. I’m unqualified to say whether a sporting event can ever rise to the level of a work of art, but I’ve watched over two thousand films, read hundreds of books, attended numerous plays, and I can confidently say that game was the greatest show I’ve ever been to.
Andrew Bell is a writer and director based in New York and a devout Knicks fan who recently launched The Connective Podcast, hosting unfiltered conversations that attempt to make sense of a country that’s lost the plot.
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