Knicks 5ever
Jalen Brunson is my doctor. He's my engineer. He's my mechanic. He's my subway driver. He's my pilot. HE'S MY DAD.
HAPPY FRIDAY/KNICKS IN FIVE/JUNETEENTH!
In honor of Juneteenth and the Knicks winning the 2026 NBA Championship, I’m taking a break from writing this week and asked my wonderful, white, ally, husband, Sam, to fill in. Sam is a lifelong Knicks fan and has taught me everything I know about this team past and present. Therefore, it only felt fitting that he write a guest post this week dedicated to the one and only New York Knicks!
What is it about sports that turns grown ass adults into rabidly emotional toddlers? Why are most of my earliest memories tied to sports? Why is it that I’ve cried more in the past week than in the previous 10 years? There’s something happening here. Let’s start by taking it all the way back to 1999, the last time the New York Knicks had a taste of NBA Finals action.
It’s June 5th, 1999. I don’t remember where my family was returning home from, or why we split up, but as fate would have it, I ended up at home in my family’s living room at our Upper West Side apartment, narrating the end of the Knicks’ Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Indiana Pacers to my Dad, who was listening intently on the car phone (yeah, remember these beauties). I couldn’t tell you the exact sequence of events, but when Larry Johnson rose up from just behind the three point line, absorbed some contact from the defender and sunk that three, I absolutely lost my shit. I remember dropping the phone, jumping up and down, screaming, taking off my shirt, sprinting around the house, and then remembering “oh shit, Dad’s on the phone and has no idea what happened!” I scrambled back to the phone, out of breath, and attempted to narrate what had just happened. I remember this like it was a few weeks ago.
Fast forward 27 years and eight days later, and the sequence of events was pretty similar. For a few hours (or maybe for the past few weeks) I was a kid again. In all the joyful, emotional, volatile, passionate glory. It was Saturday June 13th, a beautiful night in Brooklyn, and thanks to the foresight of some Knicks fan friends, we had 4 outdoor tables reserved at Brooklyn Crab in Red Hook, Brooklyn, which was proudly presenting Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the Knicks and Spurs on a brand new 230” outdoor TV. It was all lined up perfectly.
The Knicks came out and promptly dropped their lowest scoring first-half performance of the playoffs at the worst possible time, falling behind by 15 points. It was all so on-brand. And then, just as characteristically, they began marching back. On the shoulders of the Captain, Jalen Brunson, the team that built a reputation as the most resilient in NBA history launched another comeback for the ages (note: it wasn’t even the most impressive comeback they completed that week; that honor belonged to their Game 4 comeback that occurred three days prior, and that I was lucky enough to witness in-person at Madison Square Garden; but I digress).
When the final whistle blew, and the Knicks were crowned NBA Champions for the first time since 1973, I became that eight year old kid again. I jumped, I hugged, I cried, I called my dad. I let out several primal screams of “victory” and “let’s go Knicks”. The emotions flowed through me like a river after a rainstorm. I was possessed.
And it wasn’t just me. Far from it. All over the city, on every corner, outside every bodega and slice shop, throngs of New Yorkers took to the streets to watch and to celebrate. To bask in the glory. To hug a stranger.
As a dad now, there’s a particular flavor to this kind of emotion. As I was sobbing and screaming and hugging whoever was closest to me, some part of me wasn’t just watching my team win—I was watching an eight year old version of myself finally let go of 27 years of Knicks heartbreak: the ’99 Finals sweep, Patrick Ewing’s missed finger roll, two decades of losing seasons, failed draft picks, and James Dolan mismanagement. My inner child had been carrying all of that around for a long time.
Over the past few days, I’ve spontaneously broken into fits of sobbing at random moments in the day—often brought on by a particularly triggering TikTok that cuts to my core. Somewhere during one of these wet-eyed moments, I caught myself thinking about Wes, about what it means to hand your own kid a Jalen Brunson jersey with an NBA Finals patch on it instead of the inherited trauma. To let him grow up expecting the Knicks to win. Healing the inner child is supposed to be slow, deliberate work—therapy, journaling, processing. Turns out it can also happen in a single playoff run, capped off by a perfect evening at an outdoor crab shack in Red Hook.
In sports, there’s often a lot of shade thrown at “bandwagon fans”, those people who only start paying attention once a team is already doing well, buy a bunch of gear and start posing like they’ve been a fan forever. But that’s not the case here. Not in NYC, not for these Knicks. All are welcome. Never watched basketball before? No problem, throw on a Jalen jersey and yell “Fuck Wemby” with the rest of us! The general rule seems to be, the more the merrier. It’s an odd phenomenon that I’ve been thinking about a lot this week. There’s a genuine positivity and inclusivity in this Knicks Championship run that is unique, and uniquely New York.
One year ago, when we were getting ready to leave Costa Rica and move back to New York, I was dreading our return to city life. It felt like a loss, an admission of defeat in our pursuit to find paradise. What I now realize is I was overlooking the magic of community in New York. There really is no place like New York. Where you can have world famous celebrities reveling alongside balance-defying street performers, shoulder to shoulder with underage drinkers and geriatric partiers. The city is so alive with Knicks fever. It’s infectious. It’s fantastic. It’s exactly what the doctor ordered.
Community is somewhat of an amorphous concept in my life. It’s a beacon that I talk and think about a lot, but it’s hard to define exactly what it means and exactly what I’m seeking. With this Knicks Championship, I think I’ve grown a bit closer to understanding its full meaning. It’s more than just the family and friends we know intimately and can lean on in life’s big moments. It’s also about the genuine love and embrace of strangers who share values and experiences. It’s my homie Ronnie Zeidel, the 55-year old dad who I sat next to at Game 4 and shared a tear-soaked hug with after OG’s game-winning tip-in. It’s the feeling of kinship with the stranger who gave me a pound and a “Knicks In Five” on Sunday morning when Wes and I were walking to the playground in our Jalen jerseys. It’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani seeming like he’s in a “90s movie called ‘Kid Mayor’ where every idea works and he wears a basketball jersey under a suit jacket” every day.
There’s something almost emotionally intelligent about the way sports build community, in a way I don’t see replicated much elsewhere in adult life. It cuts through all the normal small talk. Mayor Zohran nailed this at the parade, comparing the Knicks’ 29-point Game 4 comeback, when they had just a 0.4% chance of winning the game, directly to the personality of the city itself. As our Kid Mayor said, “It is in that 0.4% that we go to work”. That’s not really a Knicks thing. That’s a New York thing. The Knicks just happened to put it on full display for the world to see.
This city isn’t logical, it’s fantastical. The Knicks winning the Championship is a dream come true. And this moment is everything I’ve longed for when I’ve longed for community. Thank you, Jalen, KAT, OG, Josh, Mikal, Deuce, Mitch, Landry, Jose, Sochan, Jordan, Kolek, Huk-Tuah-Porti, Pacome, and Mo. And let’s not forget MikeMikeMike. And Walt Clyde and Mike Breen. Thank you, 2026 New York Knicks! Thank you, New York!
If I Can, Make It There
I’ll Make it, Anywhere
It’s Up to You
New York, New York
i loved this guest post!!! sam, you are a beautiful writer. i was emotional reading this!!!!
So excellent!