We are New York: The Story of the Knicks' Championship Through the Eyes of the Fans

On Saturday, the New York Knicks defeated the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game Five of the NBA Finals to win their first championship in 53 years. It was a uniting moment for the most populous city in the United States as people from all walks of life took to the streets to celebrate the monumental victory. For New Yorkers, this was more than just a championship; it marked the conclusion of years - nay, decades - of heartache and suffering.

To truly appreciate the impact that this title run has had on New Yorkers, we need to go back to the 1970s, when the Knicks won their first two championships in 1970 and 1973. Peter Bernstein, 69, of Westchester, New York, actually got to go to Madison Square Garden and see the Knicks win their first-ever title in May of 1970 with his father.

"A lot of my emotions this season - and especially during the playoffs and the finals - really connected me to the feeling of experiencing the Knicks over the years with my dad, who's no longer with us," Bernstein told me. "My dad took me to those playoff games... I was at the game when Willis Reed limped out of the locker room... So having them good again connected me back to those days."

With many people that I spoke to, their Knicks fandom was inherited from the previous generation, even if they're no longer technically New Yorkers. Marc Reiner, 56, of Connecticut, was too young to remember the championship runs of 1970 and 1973, but that wasn't the case for his father, who also attended Game Seven of the 1970 NBA Finals, when Knicks center Willis Reed - who was dealing with a muscle tear in his right thigh - still started the game, giving New York the motivation it needed to win its first title. That experience laid the groundwork for Reiner to become a lifelong Knicks fan.

"My dad is from Brooklyn. He was at the 1970 Willis Reed game shortly after I was born," Reiner said. "They say in the Haggadah, the Jewish prayer book for Passover, 'You should talk to your children as if they themselves came out of Egypt.' That's the kind of way I feel about the Knicks. I didn't become most passionate as a Knick fan until 1985, when they drafted Patrick Ewing... I basically watched every game since my parents got cable in the early 90s."

Even for those who weren't lucky enough to be around for the Knicks' first championship runs, they still bleed Orange and Blue. Virginia resident Steven Lyktey, 31, was raised on Long Island and has been a Knicks fan from the day he was born.

"I have pictures of me with a Knicks pendant in the bassinet in the hospital I was born in," he said. "It's something that kinda was just ingrained in me from birth."

In the years following the Knicks' 1973 title, New York failed to recapture the magic that catapulted them to the top of the NBA. This caused some fans’ interest to shift more towards college basketball, where guys like Bill Walton, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Patrick Ewing kept their love of the game alive. Mary Joyce McLaughlin, 64, might have grown up a Knicks fan in the Bronx, but her passion for the team was reignited when New York landed the number-one overall pick in the 1985 NBA Draft, allowing them to draft Georgetown center Patrick Ewing.

"In high school, I became a huge college basketball fan," she told me. "What happened was: as we got more into the college game, and then, when we got out of college, all of those guys were playing in the pros. So then, my interest in the Knicks became greater. Once I got out of college, it was back into the Knicks."

Unfortunately, the heartbreak did not end when Patrick Ewing came to New York. The closest the Knicks came to a championship was the 1993-94 season, when they fell to the Houston Rockets in Game Seven of the NBA Finals after Hakeem Olajuwon blocked John Starks' go-ahead three-point attempt. While the Knicks made it back to the Finals five years later in 1999, the end result was the same, as New York lost to the San Antonio Spurs in five games. For McLaughlin, the painful losses of the 90s became too much to bear.

"That last game broke my heart," she explained. "And I said, 'I can't watch this anymore.' John Starks' poor performance. I love him, but his poor performance in that Game Seven. I just remember saying, 'I can't do this anymore.'"

As it turns out, the 1999 NBA Finals loss was the beginning of the end for the Knicks' run of success in the 1990s. By 2001, New York was a perpetual bottom-feeder, failing to win more than 39 games in a single season from 2002 to 2010. Sadly, this was the era in which many Knicks fans were brought up.

"I didn't really get into fandom with the Knicks, seriously, until probably 2005-ish," said Jack Hawkins, 32, of New York City. "That was the year they sucked, but they had a lot of exciting players. Like Nate Robinson going to the dunk contest and kind of wreaking havoc on the floor with his ability to leap as such a small guy. I mean, Jamal Crawford is one of my favorite players of all time. Again, he didn't win much here, but his game was something that really attracted me to the team."

Despite their ineptitude during the early 21st century, that did not deter a new generation of New Yorkers from becoming Knicks fans. Still, even after landing New York native Carmelo Anthony via trade in 2011, success evaded New York, which only won a single playoff series from 2010 to 2022.

"The 2000s and 2010s - aside from the big Melo trade - really were kind of underwhelming," 32-year-old Perry Dornbush, a lifelong Knicks fan currently living in Boston, Massachusetts, explained. "During those late 2000s and mid-Melo years, it was definitely a test in faith."

Some moments inspired hope during those dark days. There was the Carmelo Anthony trade, the Linsanity run, as well as multiple somewhat promising draft picks. However, each season would inevitably end in disappointment.

"I remember the Pablo Prigioni days. I remember when we thought RJ Barrett was our future. I remember when we had Tingis Pingus on our team," laughed Scott Lindsay, 32, of Tarrytown, New York. "Seeing some of these lineups that I used to watch with my father, it's like ridiculous now, thinking how I thought they were even okay."

The Knicks' failures peaked in 2020. From 2017 to 2020, New York had the worst overall record in the NBA at 67-163. At this point in time, the expectations for the Knicks to win a championship had never been lower.

"My friends and I root for the same four losing teams (the New York Mets, New York Islanders, New York Knicks, and New York Jets)," said Perry Dornbush. "We would get together and place friendly bets on who we thought would win first... I wasn't expecting the Knicks."

"In terms of hope, up until these past couple of weeks, the closest I ever had to that feeling was 2015, when the Mets made a pretty magical run to the World Series and unfortunately couldn't get the job done," Jack Hawkins elaborated. "The reality of the Knicks not winning a championship in my lifetime really began to set in."

But that's the funny thing about sports. It always manages to pull you back in, even when a precedent of failure has long been established. New York made sweeping internal changes during the spring of 2020. First, they hired former sports agent Leon Rose as team president in March. Then, Tom Thibodeau was named the Knicks' head coach in July. That's when the Knickerbockers started winning and even made the postseason in 2021.

"The playoff action was wonderful," described Mary Joyce McLaughlin. "But, watching some of those games, I kept on coming back to the idea that every win is a grind... It wasn't a good feeling, and I was okay with it because I still was watching March Madness and the basketball that I loved, and I was okay with that."

During this rebuilding period, the most important move the Knicks made was signing former Dallas Mavericks point guard Jalen Brunson to a four-year, $104 million contract in July of 2022. That truly was the catalyst that sparked this remarkable run for New York. After that, the Knicks didn't just start winning in the regular season, but they won in the playoffs as well. From 2023 to 2025, the Knicks won four playoff series, after having only won one in the previous 22 seasons. A changing of the guard was happening in the Eastern Conference.

"Every time they made one of these moves that built this team, I thought, 'Okay. This could work,'" Marc Reiner said. "I didn't say, 'This is going to work.' Nothing is guaranteed."

The moves that Leon Rose made were perfect and impossible to recreate. Jalen Brunson took a massive pay cut. The Knicks also traded for Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, and Josh Hart. They even made the incredibly difficult decision to fire Tom Thibodeau and hire Mike Brown after they reached the 2025 Eastern Conference Finals and broke a 26-year Conference Finals drought. Understandably, this led to insanely high expectations for the 2025-26 campaign.

"Coming into the year, I thought it was Finals or bust," Jack Hawkins told me. "You didn't have to win it, but you have to get there."

In what was considered a down year for the Eastern Conference, the Knicks did pretty well this season. They earned the number-three seed in the East after going 56-26. However, the postseason got off to a rocky start for New York. They went down 2-1 in the first round of the 2026 NBA Playoffs to the sixth-seeded Atlanta Hawks. At that point, Knicks fans - as they have been so conditioned to do - hit the panic button.

"They're down 2-1 to Atlanta, and, again, I'm going back to the grinder thing," Mary Joyce McLaughlin explained. "I'm like, 'This is great. We got this far. We're not at the caliber of these other teams.'"

But, instead of turtling as the Knickerbockers have so many times since the 1970s, they were unflappable in the face of adversity. With outstanding coaching adjustments by Mike Brown, the Knicks would win the series and rattle off 13 straight playoff victories.

"Mike Brown came in the next game, and they had a different offense," McLaughlin said. "I had never seen a moment when a team changed their offense in the playoffs. They changed their offense, and what followed was the most explosive offensive execution I have ever seen in my life!"

As the Knicks continued to battle through the playoffs, the excitement around New York City rose. Once they reached the NBA Finals, every borough of NYC was throwing its support behind the Knicks in a way never seen before. You didn't have to be a lifelong Knicks fan to join in on the fun. Everybody was welcome.

"What I will remember the most is the unity that the Knicks brought to New York City and New York as a whole," said John Rufino, 35, of Brooklyn. "It felt as if the world had no more problems because everybody was so immersed in the present moment, and I feel like that energy will carry on through the summer."

Even San Antonio Spurs fans got swept up in the hype of this Knicks run. Emmanuel Rivera-Jovel, 31, of the Bronx, is a lifelong New Yorker and a Spurs fan since 2005.

"It was weird for me because it’s the Knicks, and if they face any other team, I'm Knicks all the way. I want to watch the Knicks win a championship... Just feeling the emotions from the city was something I've never witnessed," he described. "You have your Yankees fans and your Mets fans. You have your Giants fans, you have your Jets fans. The city is united when it comes to the Knicks."

That energy that was building during this playoff run obviously carried over into the Finals, where the Knicks showed a level of resilience that we haven’t seen from any other NBA team this season. In fact, New York trailed in every game of the NBA Finals. Yet, they still emerged victorious in five games.

"I just love the grit. Just battling. Just like battling, battling, battling," explained Scott Lindsay. "Seeing them down was never nerve-racking,"

That might not have been the case during Game Four, though. There was a moment during that contest in which New York was down by 29 points. However, as they have done so many times during this run, the Knicks battled back.

"I turned the TV off with three minutes left in the first half, and I was following the score on my phone. I was like, 'We don't have to put it on the TV. Let me just at least keep track.' I know what they're capable of because of the Cleveland comeback in Game One of the Conference Finals. I'm just gonna see if they cut it to within 10," Perry Dornbush told me. "Eventually, they do, and I go, 'Alright, I'll stop tracking the score, and I'll put the game on my phone.'"

It's a good thing that Dornbush decided to put the game back on because he got to witness the largest comeback in NBA Finals history. Marc Reiner was lucky enough to be at Madison Square Garden with his daughter for the game.

"That was the loudest I've ever heard anything ever," Reiner said of MSG. "When everybody was yelling at Wembanyama, when he missed those free throws, especially."

After Victor Wembanyama missed two free throws with under two minutes to go in the game, the Knicks took a 105-104 lead off a Jalen Brunson floater. Though the Spurs reclaimed the lead, 106-105, New York forward OG Anunoby made what was probably the greatest play in New York Knicks history.

"I'm gonna remember OG's tip-in," Steven Lyktey said. "When Jalen Brunson shot that ball with way too much time on the clock, I remember just screaming, 'What the f*ck are you doing?!' But seeing OG come out of nowhere and somehow tip that ball in, that's just something I want to hang on a poster on every wall of my house."

That clutch shot gave the Knicks a 3-1 lead in the series and all but locked up their first championship in 53 years. However, New Yorkers were not going to start celebrating anything yet since they had been burned before.

"Rooting for the teams I root for, nothing is guaranteed ever," Perry Dornbush said. "I wasn't going to feel confident until the hay is in the barn, as they say."

The Knicks followed the same script they had every matchup in the series for Game Five. After falling into a 15-point hole, New York came alive and outscored San Antonio 39-20 the rest of the way through for the 94-90 victory and their first championship since 1973.

"My wife was asleep on the couch next to two of our other friends, so I woke her up with a big fat kiss on the lips. Then I proceeded to kiss my other two friends on the forehead," Dornbush said. "I ran down to the basement, grabbed a bottle of Prosecco, and did everything in my power not to shake it and spray it everywhere. I popped it open, took the first sip, and passed it around the room until it was empty."

"I fully broke down into tears," Jack Hawkins told me. "I never was one to be that emotional when it came to sports, probably because I'm so conditioned to deal with heartbreak. I'm getting a little emotional right now, reliving it."

Other Knicks fans couldn't even muster a reaction. They were so shocked by what the Knicks had done that they just had to take a moment to revel in the victory or simply catch their breath.

"I have watched every game on my couch with my mother," Scott Lindsay chuckled. "And when they won, man, we just looked at each other and breathed. There was no breathing through the playoffs."

"Honestly, I sat there like Jabba the Hutt," Marc Reiner joked. "I just took it in. I didn't cry. I answered a bunch of texts. I was very pleased. I was very satisfied. It still hasn't really hit me."

Now, the Knickerbockers are world champions. Even though the parade is over, the celebration is still going strong in New York City.

"It's interesting to say the least. I didn't think there'd be a chance in my lifetime that I'd be going to a Knicks parade," Steven Lyktey explained. "Yes, I live in Virginia, but I wasn't missing this parade for anything."

More important than the Knicks was the camaraderie NYC experienced during this run. The uniting force of a single team made the greatest city in the world that much better.

"I love New York City regardless, but this is just a cherry on top," John Rufino said. "Best city in the world. Plus, now, we have an All-Star basketball team. I still can’t believe it. New York forever!"

When I left my apartment in Queens yesterday, I looked over and saw my neighbors' son, who couldn't be more than 10 or 11 years old. He was wearing a brand-new Jalen Brunson jersey and dribbling a basketball while shooting hoops by himself. I realized that moment perfectly encapsulates this title. Unlike so many Knicks fans before him, that child will grow up thinking the Knicks are cool and a team that he can be proud of. That is a special feeling that was made possible because of the run this Knicks team just went on.

"Kenny Smith said something interesting. He said the reason why New York is so captivated by this is that you go every five blocks, and you see a basketball hoop," Mary Joyce McLaughlin concluded. "Everyone probably shoots a few baskets, whether it's with their kids or with their friends. The game is relatable. I never thought about that. Maybe that's why New York was so caught up in this. It was beautiful... It's such a positive message that we can all share in and admire."