For weeks now, the New York Knicks’ run at their first championship since 1973 has brought together a city that rarely sees eye-to-eye on much. Fans decked out in Knicks merchandise filled the streets, subways and office towers with a sea of blue and orange, often fist-pumping strangers with all feeling buoyed by the Knicks pinch-me moments on the march to the championship prize.

On Saturday night, this team of destiny delivered New Yorkers the Larry O’Brien trophy, at last, a moment that drove fans out of bars and their apartment buildings into the streets to celebrate the Knicks 94-90 Game 5 win in San Antonio.

As the Knicks closed in, and then closed it out, during the fourth quarter, each new bucket was greeted with cheers and car honks from Brooklyn to the Bronx. The city’s beacon was the Empire State Building lit up in blue and orange.

As Sportico‘s Sara Germano, a die-hard Knicks fan, reported: “Down at Pier 17, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, hundreds of Knicks fans had camped out before a large projector screen. Euphoric shrieks filled the Harbor of the East River as soon as the Knicks clinched. A young boy of about 9 years old shook the shoulders of another, yelling, ‘we finally did it!!’ When the broadcast showed Jalen Brunson receiving the finals MVP award, someone lit off Orange and blue fireworks over the pier. Spectators spilled into the seaport, grabbing celebratory hot dogs and ice cream from trucks parked along South Street as revelers screamed and milled about taking in the balmy, euphoric night.”

Added our colleague Jacob Feldman: “Having visited the Statue of Liberty earlier Saturday, I watched the pandemonium pouring across Brooklyn as the clock struck midnight through the eyes of the tourists I’d encountered on Liberty Island, visitors wearing Brazil and Morocco jerseys, whose long awaited soccer match was being shown up by an NBA Finals run few foresaw. For those World Cup visitors: No, New Yorkers don’t usually gather on street corners for impromptu watch parties. They rarely swap hope and handshakes with total strangers. At some point in the last month, the world’s city had transformed into a sports town, as if we’d all been transported to a foreign land. 

“Sporting events usually get swallowed here. Win or lose, reality typically awaits just outside the MetLife, Yankee Stadium, or MSG gates. But for weeks, the Knicks have turned all of NYC into a dreamland. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, no one wanted to go to bed—much less wake up.”

Partying wasn’t limited to just the five boroughs, engulfing the surrounding suburbs, too. Sportico‘s Molly Geary, reporting from Long Island, said: “Baseball and football tend to take fan precedence on Long Island, but I’ve seen more Knicks apparel around here in the last month than in the last five years combined. Immediately after Game 5 ended fireworks were going off on my block and, as the Knicks received the trophy, continued to be heard from various directions in the distance. ‘He seems like a very humble young man,’ my non-sports fan Dad—a lifelong New Yorker who came in the room for the last two minutes of the game—just remarked about Jalen Brunson.”

For New Yorkers, the celebrations won’t end with sunrise on Sunday. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced that a ticker-tape parade will be held on Thursday to celebrate the Knicks’s championship with more details to come. 

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