I think there's this perception that New York teams are star-studded and buy Championships and what-not, but this is largely true of just one franchise in this city - the Yankees. Granted, they more than any other team represent New York, but no other team in teh city has done anything like them. In fact, more of the teams in New York are of the Knicks, the 2004 - 2020 vintages - the Jets and Mets notably, laughably awful and embarrassing at times. The Giants being nearly as bad over the past 15 years since their second largely ridiculous Super Bowl. The Devils, long a gold standard in their sport, being underachievers. I won't even dignify the Nets. And then you get the Knicks, who if they weren't in New York, would be far more seen as an accursed franchise.
The Knicks have a bad owner, and for a good twenty years, basically until they hired Leon Rose combined with Jim Dolan turning more of his attention to The Sphere, he was worse than jsut bad, he was meddlesome. We pity teams with bad owners (the Kings, for example), but because the Knicks are in New York, their fans were never pitied for being saddled with a disaster as an owner.
Truly, if any other franchise had an owner and various leadership consortiums (remember the Phil Jackson era?) that made this many terrible moves, there would be tons of pieces about the long suffering nature of their fans. From bad draft picks, to taking on the wrong reclamation projects, for chasing bad high-spend free agents because they constantly whiffed on the good high-spend ones, to even making their good moves less effective for being so shortsighted (trading for Carmelo Anthony, giving up a bunch of good players, when they were almost certain to sign him anyway). The Knicks fans deserved love because their owner and team was so poorly managed.
The worst was that 4-5 year stretch at the end of the Carmelo era until the trade for Julius Randle, or better known as the Phil Jackson era. The one bright spot in that time, drafting Kristaps Porzingis, was more a tease that ended in disaster, with his injuries never letting him reach his potential in New York, and then the Knicks getting barely anything when trading him away. The Knicks were just a complete afterthought. But damn, was this insane fanbase hiding and waiting their time.
My first memory of how incredible the Knicks fanbase was when in their first good season in seven years, the 2020-21 season when they won nearly 50 games and got the #4 seed, they hosted Game 1 of their playoff series. The attendance restrictions had just been lifted in New York, and the Knicks packed MSG to a crazy way. Sure, Trae Young and the Hawks would win that series, in large part because 2nd team All Pro Julius Randle was super ineffective and the rest of the team similarly so, but the fanbase was back. Two years later, they made the second round for the first time in a decade = still being led by Julius Randle, but with a youngster named Jalen Brunson stepping up in a bigger role. Little by little, they were building something special.
The key of course was Jalen Brunson becoming a monster - and he is so perfect for New York. Hard working, undersized, but confident enough to know how good he is and can be. He is the perfect superstar for the Knicks to get behind. But its everything else that they've done that has been turned to gold - truly no bad moves for a good solid half decade now. Pretty much no real contributor on that 2020-21 team aside from Mitchell Robinson is still doing stuff for the current team, but they replaced the whole roster, more or less, by not shooting and missing at superstars, but selectively building it well.
There was the trade for Josh Hart, the trade for OG Anunoby - two absolute steals, particularly the Anunoby one, them realizing he is a player waiting to be unleashed with a bigger role. Of course the huge move to get KAT for Randle and DiVincenzo - which you can argue has been a win-win, but the Knicks side is the stronger "win" at this point. Of course, there's the much maligned trade of five first round picks for Mikal Bridges, but if that helped Brunson re-sign for less, adn up the team harmony, for what will be at least three of the first round picks being back-half, well then - it was worth it.
The other guys are all so well placed as well - from Deuce McBride as the random 3-point dude, Landry Shamet as the perfect plug and play vet, Jordan Clarkson as a guy who can go off every five games or so. All of it has so obviously clicked in this incredible eleven game stretch to the finals. It's insane how quickly they've just buried teams. How well they've played on both ends of the ball - especially on offense making KAT a bigger distributor point along with Brunson. The rate at which they just easily go up twenty, and don't relent; it has been something truly unprecedented, and amazing to watch.
The Knicks fans earned this too. Yes - New Yorkers are by and large very wealthy, and certainly most of those attending games in MSG are just that, but the thousands of wackos celebrating outside the stadium each day, and all over the New York metro area, are not all this unified group of millionaires. There's real people - just remember that amazing Sidetalk video of random fans celebrating their season opener win over Boston in 2021 (the "bing bong" video). Those are the Knicks fans, the ones that put in 27 years, most of which were disasters, to get to this point.
There is of course a decent chance that the Knicks lose the finals. Either the Thunder or Spurs will be the favorite, barring even more injuries in that series. The Knicks have played better than either of those teams in teh playoffs, but the Knicks haven't had to beat a team nearly as good, nor even as good as whatever team the utlimate WCF winner would have beaten in the Western Conference Finals. The Knicks though are doing something special - more than lighting up the garden, they've been so good, and somehow so likeable, they are gaining the love of millions of non New Yorkers. They've been able to capture the basketball loving nation, and doing it by just being a damn good team, built through trades and personal growth, and all cresting at just the right point in time for this city.
