A message from the centre of the universe: Knicks in five

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There are days where sport anoints somewhere the centre of the universe, weakens gravity and thins the air, makes you believe that to be anywhere else would be simply preposterous, that maybe nowhere else even exists. For all the talk that the New York Knicks’ NBA Finals run was clouding the World Cup, on Saturday night football and basketball met like music and lyrics to create something bigger than either, Brazilians and Moroccans melting into a melee of orange and blue delirium, a city loaded on sport and begging for more. 

New York might never have experienced a sporting night like this before; perhaps no city ever has. Neither game actually happened in New York – Brazil redeeming themselves to draw 1-1 against Morocco at the Metlife in New Jersey, the Knicks winning 94-90 in San Antonio, Texas – but debauchery ensued in Manhattan and Brooklyn and the Bronx. These were the most-watched NBA Finals since Michael Jordan’s last in 1998, the Knicks’ first NBA Championship since 1973. Jalen Brunson, the 6’2” (short in NBA-land, if that helps) son of a former Knick, who famously took a $100m pay cut on his most recent contract to protect the team’s salary cap, matched Jordan’s record of 45 points in a Championship-winning match on the road. This run has consumed New York, made sports fans of everyone, forced you to watch and fall in love, helped by the fourth game featuring the greatest comeback in basketball as the Knicks came from 29 points behind to lead the series 3-1. 

At half-time on Saturday night, with the Knicks down by five, thousands meandered through Manhattan waiting for something unclear, not actually watching the game but here for what might come next, in search of joy and release and feeling. The city was tense and edgy, scuffles breaking out just to give the swelling energy an outlet, energy which could just as easily have curdled as come good. “Someone’s going to throw something at your head, go home before you get a cracked skull,” pleaded a too-old-for-this cop, safe in the knowledge no-one would listen. 

And yet with five minutes to go, every pizza parlour and late-night barbers with a screen had an expressionist tableau of squirrelly faces mashed against the windows just for a glimpse, craning over cracked phone screens and TVs from the 90s. Squeals became screams, became car horns and french horns and fireworks, calls home and calls to God. When it came to it, people didn’t know how to act, what to do with their limbs, how to feel the feeling they’ve imagined and dreamed of.

This is the endpoint, what all the hope and heartbreak and boredom is in service of. So what’s it like? Is it worth it? Of course. It always is, a night that justifies a lifetime. Helicopters overhead gave the city a frantic heartbeat, constant sirens never getting any closer. Entire conversations were held solely in “Knicks in five” (they won a potential seven-game series 4-1), thousands seemingly unable to say anything else. “OMG,” one girl screamed at a blacked-out Jeep trying desperately not to be jumped on. “Is that Fetty Wap?” (It wasn’t the rapper). 

Different neighbourhoods adopted different celebratory identities; the West Village this collectivist utopia, the game projected onto apartment blocks, thousands singing Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind and Frank Sinatra in perfect ecstasy. Meanwhile midtown Manhattan maintained its edge, an unfortunate row of parked school buses having transported fans to and from New Jersey becoming a jungle gym for the city’s errant youth. Fireworks wheeled into the expectant sky above Times Square, every billboard spreading the news, smoke hanging in the air just to join in. Brazilians were treated as little deities, leading chants of “Ole”, New Yorkers for the night. For all some will have tried, this could not be commodified or exploited. 

But more than anything this united an otherwise ununifiable city of extremes, made it bigger yet smaller, inhabited by a single-issue humanity. There was no division, only Knicks in five, these beautiful people glowing with euphoria amidst the gorgeous anarchy. Parents woke up kids who could not understand why the world was shaking but who will be grateful for the pictures in 20 years. Tourists stared, terrified and bewildered by the scale of it all, by the notion that anything could matter this much.

Actor John Turturro once called riding the subway after a big Knicks win “one of the joys of being alive”, and never has that been so true, every stop a fresh wave of noise and feeling. Just before 2am on the N train downtown, a blond frat boy in a Knicks jersey and beige chinos spotted me watching him. “Knicks in fiiiive” he said, then, “I love you.” I told him I loved him too. Maybe, in the heat and happiness, I did. Maybe that’s all this ever was, just thousands of people walking the streets of New York, looking for love.

Photograph by Adam Gray/Getty Images