New York hoop fans are Knickerbonkers
New York Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns (32) celebrates after defeating the Boston Celtics in Game 2 of an NBA basketball second-round playoff series against the Boston Celtics, Wednesday, May 7, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) Credit: AP/Charles Krupa
Here we go again. This was the attitude of all but the most blindly optimistic Knicks fans when it became apparent that they would be meeting the defending champion Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
It’s been 25 years since the Knicks made it past the second round of the playoffs, so you can forgive the city for its initial caution and pessimism. Why get too invested when you know the season is just going to end in heartbreak again?
Well, two jaw-dropping, come-from-way-behind wins over the Celtics later, and New York has thrown that caution to the wind and embraced this Knicks team in a way they haven’t been embraced this century.
The city the Knicks returned to after beating the Celtics twice in Boston suddenly is all-in. According to Victory Live, a ticketing technology company that analyzes transactions, not listings, on the secondary market, the average price for Saturday’s Game 3 at Madison Square Garden was $1,956, with Game 4, also at the Garden, pulling down an average price of $1,716.
For those who can’t pay Taylor Swift/Super Bowl prices to see an NBA second-round playoff game, the Knicks again are hosting a watch party with big screens on 33rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues and NBA.com lists more than 20 “Knicks Tap Takeovers” where fans can go to watch the game with fellow fans.
Social media has taken Knicks fever to a whole new level. X has been flooded with posts about the newly elected Pope Leo XIV being a Knicks fan, given that he and three of the Knicks — Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart — all attended Villanova as undergraduates. There also have been multiple posts titled “Jalen Brunson Saved My Life.”
Can the Knicks live with all this love after coming up big when they were the bad guys in Boston? How do they block out all the outside noise as they prepare for one of the biggest games at Madison Square Garden in years?
Everyone has their tactics. Karl-Anthony Towns says he makes it a point to stay off social media. Brunson doesn’t stay away but doesn’t take it to heart, either.
“Whenever I see stuff like that, positive or negative, I flush it,” he said. “I can’t have a reaction to it. You can’t react to the positive stuff and not react to the negative stuff. You have to exclude everything.
“I’m just happy that I have an opportunity to play for a great organization and a great city. It’s just an opportunity I don’t want to take for granted.”
Counterintuitively, it has been harder for this Knicks team to win at home than on the road. Three of the Knicks’ four victories in their first-round series against the Pistons took place in Detroit, with the Knicks losing Games 2 and 5 at the Garden.
“You go on the road, you have a close-knit group, you understand that it’s you against the crowd, you against the atmosphere,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Calls are probably not going your way, so you have to make things go your way. We have to have that understanding, and then the same thing, it’s the playoffs, so there’s urgency to it, whether you are home, road, there has to be urgency in every game. We have to understand what’s at stake. You have to earn your wins.”
The Knicks earned their wins big-time in Boston, coming back from a 20-point third-quarter deficit in each game to win in the final seconds. The fact that they did so against the defending champions, who beat them four times in the regular season, has elevated the Knicks to a level of love they haven’t seen since Patrick Ewing was the centerpiece of the team in the last century.
Knicks fever still might not have reached its peak in this series. If the Knicks find a way to win Saturday, they will be up 3-0. No team has ever won an NBA playoff series in any round after falling behind 0-3.
“Our mentality right now is it’s 0-0,” Brunson said. “Not going to focus on that. Going to focus on the next play, the next quarter. not going to look ahead. Don’t look at anything.
“I feel like it’s going to be crazy [Saturday]. The fans have always been supportive no matter what. So I think it will be great.”
At those prices, it’s got to be.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
