A lot of people have asked me over the past few weeks when I, a diehard Red Sox girl, "became" a Knicks fan. The answer involves geography, television, and a version of sports fandom that might not really exist anymore. Loving the Red Sox and the Knicks with the same heart and the same brain has never been a contradiction for me. Both entered my life because someone pointed a television antenna in the right direction.
I grew up, increasingly long ago, in the Berkshires, that pastoral boundary between Massachusetts and New York, New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Summer folk keen to fill themselves with theater and music and mountains and lakes made Boston and New York City our dueling metropoles. So, too, did our televisions.
Back then, fandom wasn’t determined by social media algorithms or influencers but by what your radio and television could pick up. In the Berkshires, our television was a mix of channels from Albany, Boston, and Springfield -- channels that ignored state lines in their reach for audience. The Red Sox became part of my soul because of WSBK, the legendary Boston station. The Knicks entered our home because of WOR-TV, Channel 9.
That was fandom. Access created attachment.
When I moved to New York for graduate school, the Knicks, deep in their Patrick Ewing era, became more real. Players I watched from afar were now a quick train ride away. I knew people with season tickets who were happy to share. I cheerfully took nosebleed rush seats when available. The team moved from being an electronic presence on the screen to the center of a physical community I inhabited.
The Knicks are no ordinary team for New Yorkers. They are one of the few remaining institutions that still belong to the entire city. With all due respect to the relative newcomer Nets and their growing Brooklyn fanbase, and the incredible Liberty, who I adore, the Knicks, an original NBA franchise, have historic, multigenerational loyalty. There is no split - no Yankees versus Mets, Rangers versus Islanders - kind of conversation. The Knicks are it for New York, capable of making strangers hug and high-five. Any time the Knicks make a meaningful playoff run, the New York that I love best stands tall. Everyone pays attention. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone wants to talk about the last possession, the ignored foul, the missed free throw.
New York has conversations.
Perhaps that's why this particular Knicks team feels so special. They are remarkably easy to love. Yes, Jalen Brunson sits atop the throne. Watching him work is witnessing wizardry. Whenever the Spurs took double-digit leads in the finals (and they did it a lot!), Brunson - perhaps the greatest closer the sport has ever seen - didn’t care. Scoring 45 of his team’s 94 points in Game 5, he was a hero already, a legend in the making. He didn’t play basketball across these playoffs as much as he made magic, making me wonder if Harry Potter himself was casting spells in the arena every time Brunson shot for three, created space where there wasn’t any, and, especially, drove to the rim past Wemby, baiting opponents to foul him.
But the affection doesn't stop there. I love every member of this team, from starters to bench. That’s the thing: any and all of these guys can be a hero on any given night, in any given game. In the wake of the insistence by so many that on paper, the Spurs were the better team, the Knicks won. OG’s tip in for the impossible-to-describe Game 4? Superhuman. KAT’s shutting down of Wemby in Game 1? Epic. Josh Hart’s constant hustle - rebounding, assisting, stealing, defending, shooting - as the consummate all-rounder? Astounding. And Mitchell Robinson’s last-second rebound to secure the championship? Just beyond.
That’s the point of this team. It invites collective affection, what sociologist Emile Durkheim dubbed “collective effervescence,” because it feels impossible, at times, to reduce the success to a single star even though the team most certainly has one in the MVP. The Knicks are enabling New Yorkers to remember that a city of millions can still feel like a neighborhood, sharing an emotional energy that is bigger than any one person as eyes fixated on screens in Central Park, in neighborhood bars, on projections on apartment buildings, and in the storied space of Radio City Music Hall.
A playoff run can’t make New York life less complicated. It can’t shorten anyone’s commute or lower anyone’s rent. But the miles-long block parties created something that is increasingly rare in modern life. It’s why we do fandom together, making space where our passions are celebrated, surrounded by people wearing their colors proudly, and knowing by heart the chants, the rituals, and the main characters. During these playoffs, we were bound by an emotional state of wanting to win that transcended, however momentarily, the fact that we do not actually know one another. The Knicks gifted us a community that persisted in hope, and in it, we found celebration.
Amy Bass is professor of sport studies and chair of the division of social science and communication at Manhattanville University. Bass is the author of One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together, among other titles. In 2012, she won an Emmy for her work with NBC Olympic Sports on the London Olympic Games.
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