New York Liberty, WNBA champs, honored with Canyon of Heroes parade in Manhattan
New York Liberty center Jonquel Jones clutches the MVP trophy Sunday inside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn after leading the team to a game 5 defeat of the Minnesota Lynx in the WNBA Finals and their first-ever title. Credit: Errol Anderson
A banner for the New York Liberty hangs above the portico of New York City Hall, America’s oldest still in continuous use: "2024 WNBA CHAMPIONS."
Below are more signs: "HISTORY MADE" and "THANK YOU FANS."
Fresh off their first-ever championship, the Liberty are set for their first-ever parade along the Canyon of Heroes, stepping off at 10 a.m. Thursday, with an outdoor City Hall ceremony to follow at noon, presided over by Mayor Eric Adams. Then, at 7 p.m. the team has scheduled a celebration with fans at their arena, Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
On Sunday, the Liberty won the deciding Game 5 of the WNBA Finals, beating the Minnesota Lynx 67-62 in overtime. It marked the Liberty’s first championship, and came in their 28th season.
The team had previously made appearances in the championship round five times, including in the league’s first season, in 1997, when there was only a title game and not a series. The Liberty became the last of the original eight franchises to claim the title.
This was the current core group’s second straight appearance in the Finals. The Liberty lost three games to one last year to the Las Vegas Aces and were determined to create a better outcome for themselves from the start in 2024. They finished with the WNBA’s best regular-season record at 32-8, guaranteeing them home-court advantage throughout the playoffs.
And so, with the historic win, as the city has done for championship baseball, football, soccer, hockey and other teams, the Liberty are getting a parade. The route snakes up Broadway, with viewing from the sidewalks. There’s a disabled-paradegoer viewing area at Zuccotti Park, the west side of Broadway from Cedar to Liberty streets.
The route is along the Canyon of Heroes, the stretch where Broadway begins at Battery Place and runs blocks north to Chambers Street by City Hall, which was completed in 1811.
The NYPD will begin closing streets on Broadway and nearby starting at 9 a.m. Thursday.
Preparations were still being made Wednesday for the ceremony at City Hall, which unlike the parade requires a ticket: The podium was being constructed, folding chairs put out, loud speakers put up, portable toilets trucked in, spotlights positioned, cameras set up, music tested and an emcee doing a mic check.
The mayor’s office recommends taking public transportation, as there is no parking in the area starting at midnight Thursday. And while public transportation is recommended, several subway stops will be closed or skipped: the City Hall R/W station skipped, the West exits on Centre Street to the 4/5/6 at Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station closed, and the 4/5 station directly at Bowling Green north of the National Museum of the American Indian open only for those with disabilities.
Since the 19th century, war heroes and their commanders, kings and queens, princes and prime ministers, presidents and Olympians, pioneering airmen, a Pope and a former prisoner of war have been showered with celebratory parades.
Along Broadway, hundreds of black plaques are embedded in the sidewalks commemorating previous parade honorees.
The roots of ticker-tape parades date to Colonial America’s earliest days, when soldiers wore their colors for ceremonial reviews, according to a history published by the Downtown Alliance, the business improvement district that includes the parade route. In July 2021, the city hosted a parade for the essential workers who helped get the region through the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The tradition of using ticker tape — originally the now-obsolete strips of paper that convey messages like stock prices — for parades started when workers tossed ribbons of tape from office windows to mark the 1886 unveiling of the Statue of Liberty.
