“From the Stands” is a periodic SportsRantNY feature where our followers get to wax poetic about the teams, moments, and memories that shaped their lives as fans. These essays are written by real New Yorkers who live and die with the teams that represent our city and the greater metropolitan area.
As far as my son is concerned, the Knicks are the most successful franchise in the NBA. He was born last July.
On Saturday, June 14th, 2026, the game clock hit zero. After 53 years, the New York Knickerbockers won the NBA Championship.
Like most New Yorkers, I spent the days before each game against the San Antonio Spurs in a ball of anxiety.
Where would I watch? With whom? Would the Knicks choke? What if they actually won?
1999
It’s an anxiety built over 27 years. I was 10 when the Knicks last reached the NBA Finals. I remember sitting in a sports shack with a close friend on a hot summer day in 1999. On a small TV high on a shelf, the 8th-seed Knicks were playing the 1-seed Heat in Game 5, the definitive game of the series.
Down one with 4.5 seconds left, off a sideline inbounds pass, Allan Houston drove to the shoulder of the free-throw line and shot a floater. It clanked off the front of the rim, skied into the air, and dropped straight through the net. It was the first time an 8 seed ever beat a 1.
My friend and I, in our youthful exuberance, lost our g*dd*mn minds.
(If you watch the linked video closely, On the Knicks’ sideline that night, two men watched the shot and erupted: Rick Brunson and Tom Thibodeau. History rhymes )
The Knicks pushed deeper into the playoffs, and more drama followed.
Down three with 11.9 seconds left in an Eastern Conference Finals game against the Pacers, Larry Johnson took another sideline inbounds pass and shot a three. It fell, the foul was called, and the basket counted. A free throw to tie. He steadied his mind and, with all the tension of New York City on his shoulders, sank it. A four-point play, and the Knicks won. While I watched the game anxiously from my living room couch, the same friend I’d lost my mind with was there. He still has the complimentary towel from that game.
Down three with 11.9 seconds left in an Eastern Conference Finals game against the Pacers**,
**Of note: The first comment of the video reads “Who else is here after OG just won it for the Knicks in Game 4 of the 2026 Finals? “. I liked said comment aggressively.
Latrell Sprewell then became a mad man. After a Patrick Ewing injury, he carried the Knicks all the way to the Finals.
They seemed like a team of destiny, right up until they made the Finals. There they faced a generational center in his third season: Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs. He was unstoppable. The Spurs won 4–1, and a dynasty began. History Rhymes once more.
That run was ecstasy to 10-year-old me. I became a Knicks fan for life.
Little did I know it would be decades before I’d bask in the ecstasy of a Knicks Finals run.
Family Ties
A passion was born. My love of the Knicks became a love of basketball. I watched, I played, and I talked about it incessantly.
The beauty of professional sports is that it gives a little boy a way to connect with kids and adults alike. After any dramatic game, I’d pick up the landline and dial my grandpa, who, without a doubt, had watched the same game. He was a tough Jew from upstate New York who spent his youth boxing in the Golden Gloves. Drafted into the Army in WWII, he was placed in the OSS and trained as a spy. He rarely spoke about any of it. But he loved to give me his hot takes on those calls.
He admired mentally tough, grittier players. In basketball, he held in the highest regard the men who delivered in the fourth quarter.
He once famously declared he’d “take Paul Pierce over LeBron James, because Paul delivers when it matters.” This was the era of the early Cavs LeBron who couldn’t beat the Celtics.
The take hasn’t aged well. My grandfather passed 15 years ago, and I’d like to think he’d chuckle to know Bron is still going, and just how wrong he was.
That’s the sentiment I thought of watching Jalen Brunson cross over Wembanyama, lean into him to knock him off balance, pump fake, then dive recklessly head-first toward the rim (much like my one-year-old son toward the edge of any couch) and score just beyond Wemby’s outstretched hand.
Jalen Brunson cross over Wembanyama,
My grandfather would have loved Jalen Brunson.
As I’ve grown older, most of the indulgences of my youth have faded. The one that remains is the Knicks. Every season, my dad and I would convince ourselves that maybe this year would be different.
I’d watch until the Knicks broke my spirit and I had to quit for my mental health.
I still remember how the Knicks’ 2017 season ended: unceremoniously, in disgust. Derrick Rose disappeared. Not figuratively. He no-call, no-showed and went full AWOL. Carmelo Anthony and Kyle O’Quinn were both ejected for flagrant fouls out of frustration. The Knicks lost by 14 to the New Orleans Pelicans. We’d later learn Rose had a crash out over his benching down the stretch of a nationally televised game, benched for Ron Baker, the same Ron Baker that Steve Mills would later hand a no-trade clause. I turned the game off mid-broadcast and didn’t watch another Knicks minute the rest of the season.
As I built a life for myself, the calls I’d once had with my grandpa became calls with my father. For nearly a decade, one theme ran through them: Are you still watching games?
A New Era
That began to change when Leon Rose took charge and hired Tom Thibodeau. Under Thibodeau, the Knicks limited mistakes and played hard-nosed basketball, enough to reach the playoffs in his very first season, with 28.6%-career-three-point-shooter Elfrid Payton as their starting point guard.
Then came the 16th Knicks point guard of the 21st century: Jalen Marquis Brunson.
He was the first, and most important, of Leon Rose’s acquisitions for what would become a championship starting lineup.
And it was not popular at the time. Bill Simmons, an NBA reporter and historian I revere, said of the move:
When Brunson signed, our reaction wasn’t the jubilation you’d expect. It was relief. We finally had a player who could responsibly take care of the rock in the fourth.
We were happy with competence. Little did we know we were acquiring greatness. Starter two came via a midseason trade that corrected a past mistake: Cam Reddish and a first had been sent out for Josh Hart. The rest of the league could have had Josh Hart, but they were caught sleeping. One person wasn’t surprised: Jalen Brunson himself.
Then came OG Anunoby. The Knicks became good when Brunson walked in the building. They became a contender when OG joined the roster. They went 14–2 right after the trade, and my dad and I were aghast.
This team was good. Like, seriously good. We were shocked, we became believers, and we LOVE OG Anunoby.
OG is the personification of Nietzsche’s Übermensch. His father was a professor of economics, and it shows. He reads the game on defense at a level higher than any player we’ve followed closely. But it’s not just intellect. OG is the .001% physical freak in a league of freaks. Bigger. Stronger. Jumps higher. Footwork of a ballerina.
And he stays cool, no matter what’s happening around him.
OG became the first Knicks jersey I’d bought in years. My previous one, Kristaps Porzingis, I threw in the trash, despondent, when he was unexpectedly traded and badmouthed all things Knicks on his way out the door. That trade happened on my birthday.
The only thing that can stop OG is injury, which it did against the Pacers. The Knicks were up in the series, but the second OG’s hamstring strained, my dad and I knew in our hearts the series was over.
The next year, Leon Rose, unlike his previous four in charge, put his money where his mouth was. He traded everything for the final two championship starters: Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges.
Fortune favors the bold.
With the team assembled and a real chance to win it all, my dad and I held a weekly check-in. We’d endlessly debate the ranking of the Knicks’ second- through sixth-best players. After a Knicks–Nuggets game where OG had 34 points and 4 steals, I told my dad, proudly and emphatically: he’s the Knicks’ second-best player.
His response? “You know, defense is 50% of the game. I’d say he’s their best player.”
Settle down, dad. Settle down. A hot take shared is an act of love.
Bringing it Home
As the world now knows, our early faith in OG paid off when he made the greatest play in Knicks history to win Game 4 of the NBA Finals, a play that showed every trait that earned him his reverence in our household.
It starts with OG inbounding the ball. After getting it to Brunson, he notices he’s been left open: De’Aaron Fox (has) left him to double Brunson. He hovers at the three-point line in case Brunson wants the outlet. The instant the shot goes up, he sees a lane and crashes the boards hard. He rises above the three remaining Spurs and tips the ball in from seven feet out, one of only two players to do that since the stat began in 2021.
It’s everything that makes OG great: supreme situational awareness, a high basketball IQ, and .0001% athleticism. He’s a Hall of Fame talent.
On the morning of June 14th, the friend I’d watched the Allan Houston shot with 27 years earlier was heading to a viewing party on West 4th, arriving at 4. And like all of New York behind this run, my family backed my obsession. My mother-in-law would watch our son so my wife and I could watch in Brooklyn. She’s become as much a Knicks fan as I am.
As the clock ticked to zero on the fourth Knicks win of the series, a championship, I froze. I couldn’t bring myself to move, I was in such disbelief. Tears dripped from my eyes as screams came from every direction. The whole city was enthralled. But as I looked around the crowd, I could see a scattered few just like me.
Grown men, frozen, with a slight smile and tears pooling in their eyes. These were the men who’d sat through Isiah Thomas. The Phil Jackson era. The Steve Mills era. The Steve Francis trade. The Eddy Curry trade. The Andrea Bargnani trade.
I walked up to them, gave them a hug, and said: we did it.
What we did, I can’t really tell you. It’s a surreal, parasocial thing. I watch, with joy, the best in the world play the game I love, representing the city I love more.
I know my dad understood, and so would my grandpa. The Knicks, after 53 years, are champions once more.
I left the bar, smiled once more, and gave my dad a ring. I’ve got to keep him sharp for when his grandson starts to call.
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