‘It’s like Jesus returning!’: Knicks preparing to make history in front of all-star New York crowd

“The Knicks going to the Finals – it’s like Jesus returning!” screamed the fan into the camera. It was one of the less over-the-top comments from the crowd that teemed out of Madison Square Garden after the New York Knicks swept the Cleveland Cavaliers to reach the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999.

The beautiful madness is captured by Sidetalk, “New York’s one-minute street show” as it self-describes, express-packaging the thoughts of New Yorkers around cultural events. Sidetalk’s status has grown to the level that Zohran Mamdani smilingly pledged on camera not to outlaw snowball fights in NYC back earlier this year. It has been perfectly placed to chart the Knicks’ rise back to contention, and what it means to the city. 

The mania around the Garden has been the barometer. Fans climbing onto the canopy of its imposing porch and – even more precariously, after last year’s elimination of the Boston Celtics in the playoffs – the jumbotron adjacent to the arena have been some of the touchstones, in between an interviewer in a Spider-Man mask swigging from a bottle of Hennessy and inviting fans to join him in doing so. It perfectly describes what is less a sporting achievement and more a cultural explosion.

One of two gargantuan tasks awaits in the Finals, against either reigning champions the Oklahoma City Thunder or the San Antonio Spurs and Victor Wembanyama, the 7ft 4in superhuman who promises to dominate the league for the next decade. Those around the Garden don’t care. The Knicks are ready for this. New York is ready for this.

In the 27 mainly lean years since they last reached the Finals, there have been some truly terrible Knicks teams. They are here now after 11 straight victories in the playoffs, a winning run only before equalled or bettered in that period of the season by the Los Angeles Lakers of 1989 and 2001 (led by Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant respectively), plus the 2017 Golden State Warriors. Mike Brown and his players are breathing rare air.   

Donald Trump told reporters at a White House briefing earlier this week that he is planning to attend a Finals game at the Garden, invited by the Knicks’ controversial owner James Dolan among “numerous people”. Whatever sort of reception he receives, Trump would be quite an addition to the most heavyweight celebrity row in the NBA. Wherever the Knicks are, Spike Lee is, always clad from head to foot in orange club merch, while Timothée Chalamet has been an ever-present during the current run, snubbing the Met Gala to stay that way. Jay-Z – of course, with his line from Empire State Of Mind “courtside, Knicks and Nets give me high-fives” – and Jimmy Fallon have also dropped by.

It isn’t just about the stars. The smartest thing Dolan ever did was to delegate, and the arrival of Leon Rose as president in March 2020 began the revival. The former agent of LeBron James, Allen Iverson and Knicks legend Carmelo Anthony inherited a failing franchise; in that Covid-interrupted season, the Knicks had played 66 games when the campaign screeched to a halt. They had won just 21 – for context, 14 fewer than the Brooklyn Nets. For Rose, who teared up as the Knicks closed out game four in Cleveland, this is the culmination of an incremental process of improvement. He has largely resisted the temptation to swing for the fences and go for A-list names, slowly building with shrewd moves for Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns and London-born OG Anunoby, who have become stars here.

Rose’s first smart move was to appoint experienced coach Tom Thibodeau, a tough taskmaster big on accountability, to build culture. He also took the risk of firing Thibodeau last summer, just after the Knicks reached the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in a quarter-century, and replace him with a more player-focused coach in Brown. A lot of it is about feel here. Nobody is doubting the transcendent play of Brunson, but he is not just a brilliant shotmaker. He is pure New York; scrappy, determined and never one to back down despite his relatively small size (he stands 6’2’’). He is “the perfect anti-superstar for New York,” as Chalamet describes him.

In one of Sidetalk’s first viral videos outside the Garden, the camera approached fans after the double-overtime win over the Celtics on opening night in October 2021. Amid the colourful cast was one man who clutched the mic hard and yelled: “We had De Blasio, we had Cuomo, it was rough shit, but we have the Knicks.” With a nod towards political controversies and division, it was a poignant reminder amongst the tumult of what a unifying force the Knicks are for NYC.

Photographs by Tim Phillis / AP; Selcuk Acar / Getty Images