The Knicks’ victory party is more than a celebration of basketball – it’s a celebration of hope

Spike Lee, enthroned on the promenade of the Brooklyn Bridge, clad in Knicks orange with basketball in hand. The New York Historical’s statue of Abraham Lincoln in Karl-Anthony Towns’ No 32 jersey. Mayor Zohran Mamdani repealing kids’ bedtimes in advance of the New York team’s quest for glory. And then, and then, and then, insurmountably, doggedly, fiercely, gloriously, for the first time in over half a century, the Knicks brought it home. 

I’m in tears as I write. I should note: I really don’t care much, in the grand scheme of things, about sport. Any of it. I realise and accept that this is a failing on my part, and I have nothing but respect for my beloved and talented colleagues on the esteemed sports desk of The Observer — not least George Simms, who rightly called New York in the wake of the Knicks’ triumph “the centre of the universe”. The team’s run, as he wrote, consumed New York, and made sports fans of everyone.

I’ve lived in London for decades, far longer than I ever lived in the Big Apple, my old home town. But I identify as a New Yorker: always will and always have. I get back as often as I can and I have many, many friends there, most of whom have as little inclination to head to Yankee Stadium or Madison Square Garden as I have. Yet, pretty much to a person, in the last little while, all that has changed: to a person we’re ecstatic about this jubilee. 

There’s been a lot of talk in recent days about the evils of social media, and in general I’m happy to join the chorus on that front — but I gotta tell you, I was desperate for the virtual delight, not to say hysteria, I found on Instagram as I watched and envied my fellow New Yorkers dance in the streets. Parade Thursday Manhattan, Mayor Mamdani posted, and by heck I wish I could be there. The ticker-tape parade — an official New York tradition since 1919, with unofficial ticker-tape parades taking place back into the 19th century  — “may well be the largest parade in New York City”, the mayor said. Bear in mind that the Apollo 11 astronauts got a ticker-tape parade and you’ll understand the scale of the celebration. 

I’ve been considering just exactly what it is that I’m missing by not being there. First, collective joy. It’s been a while, a long while, since we’ve had some of that, on either side of the Atlantic. Collective outrage, yes. Marching in pink pussy hats, or shouting #NoKings, that’s one thing. But this is another thing altogether. It is a knowing celebration of a city, by a city, built by immigrants; a city that proves, decade after decade, that while it might not always be easy, we can all get along just fine. Shout out to Knicks fan MD Ahnaf Hossain who went viral with “My mayor’s Muslim, my bagel’s Jewish, my Christian Dior, Knicks in four” — updated, huzzah and laud, to “My Mayor still Muslim, My Bagel’s still Jewish, even the Pope’s on our side… KNICKS IN FIVE!” This is who we are, we New Yorkers. It is. No matter what. 

Absolutely, sport offers opportunities for collective joy that can be hard to find elsewhere. Yet a certain kind of tribalism can tip over into something else. It may not have escaped your notice that England play Croatia in Dallas tonight: how can we reckon with the way in which the England flag itself has become a challenging — some would say threatening — symbol?  

I bow to the expertise of David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, but more’s the point, a passionate authority on the history of sport. (I was once at a dinner party where we all played a guessing game that involved individual players setting questions for their fellow guests: Remnick, one of our number, seemed genuinely baffled and not a little hurt when the rest of us drew a blank on the identity of some third baseman for the 1932 Yankees.) “Nothing like it,” he wrote of this brilliant run. “Not in my lifetime, anyway.” Coming from behind in game after game, the Knicks fought and fought harder, fought again, refused to surrender — offering too a metaphor (as sport so often, and so brilliantly, does) to those of us who may find ourselves in political despair, seemingly outmaneuvered by forces pushing democracy to the edge of the frame. 

The Knicks took back the streets as those streets were filled with New Yorkers of every stripe, cheering victory, cheering hope. Cheer for hope as loud as you possibly can.  

Join the Observer Book Club, in person or online, for an evening with Erica Wagner discussing her acclaimed new novel, Wash, with Tom Gatti, Thursday 18 June

Photograph by Adam Gray/Getty Images