By Maria Tsvetkova and Joseph Ax
NEW YORK, June 18 (Reuters) – Delirious New York Knicks fans flooded the streets of Lower Manhattan on Thursday for a ticker-tape parade celebrating the newly crowned NBA champions, capping a dream season more than five decades after the team last won a title.
Read more Soccer-Kansas City Police Hunt Suspect in Shootings That Hit Uber Driver En Route to World Cup Match
The stretch of Broadway known as the “Canyon of Heroes” was a sea of orange and blue, as throngs of people gathered in the pre-dawn hours — with some camping out overnight — to secure a spot behind police barricades for what Mayor Zohran Mamdani said could be the largest parade in the city’s history.
The Knicks’ dominant run through the National Basketball Association playoffs electrified this sports-mad city that had grown used to falling short year after year. The team’s 15-3 playoff record featured a number of improbable comebacks, culminating with Saturday’s 94-90 victory in Game 5 of the NBA Finals over the San Antonio Spurs to end its 53-year title drought.
Trip Kesler, a Long Island native who lives in Florida, flew to Virginia to meet her brother before they drove north for the parade. The two secured a prime spot along the parade route after waking up at 3 a.m.
“We love our team,” the 35-year-old Kesler said, wearing an orange-and-blue Knicks hat that her 64-year-old mother knitted for the occasion. Her dad told her mother every year for decades that the Knicks would win, she added.
“And we did it this year,” she said. “I was locked in since Game One of the finals. I knew who was gonna win.”
The viewing pens were already full three hours before the parade kicked off, the New York Police Department said.
Knicks players basked in the crowd’s adulation as the parade set off from the southern tip of Manhattan at 10:32 a.m. EDT for the 2/3-mile (1.1 km) route to City Hall, where the team received symbolic keys to the city from Mamdani.
At one point, NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Jalen Brunson, the Knicks captain and unofficial king of New York, walked along the street carrying the golden Larry O’Brien championship trophy as fans screamed his name and reached out to touch the hardware.
Karl-Anthony Towns, wearing a backwards Knicks hat and smoking a cigar, danced with Mamdani on one float, while backup center Mitchell Robinson rode in one of his custom trucks.
‘THIS IS OUR TEAM’
“This is our city. This is our team,” Mamdani said at City Hall, with the players’ jerseys represented by banners hanging off the building. “For 53 years, we watched; for 53 years, we waited. Now we’ve won.”
Read more Soccer-With Relations Icy, Many Canadians Lament Hosting World Cup With US
Brunson, who took the lectern to chants of “MVP!” and a standing ovation, was often doubted earlier in his career due to his lack of size and elite athleticism. But the normally understated star ended his brief remarks with a message for people with “a lot of negative stuff to say.”
“When you prove them wrong, you don’t have to say shit to them,” Brunson, who scored nearly half his team’s points in the Finals clincher, said to cheers. “They don’t deserve it.”
Singer-songwriter and native New Yorker Alicia Keys concluded the ceremony by singing a few bars of Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” before transitioning into her 2009 ode to the city, “Empire State of Mind.” Hundreds of fans were seen spontaneously singing her unofficial city anthem in the streets on Saturday following the Knicks’ victory.
Knicks stars of yesteryear also joined the party, including Walt “Clyde” Frazier, who helped lead the franchise to its two previous titles in 1970 and 1973, and Hall of Fame center Patrick Ewing. So too did celebrity superfans, including movie director Spike Lee — a courtside presence at Madison Square Garden for decades — actor Timothee Chalamet, actor Ben Stiller and rapper Fat Joe.
MASSIVE POLICE PRESENCE
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who had estimated the crowd could number in the millions, ordered the deployment of 10,000 officers to the parade route, after Saturday’s victory sparked sometimes chaotic celebrations in the streets across the city’s five boroughs.
City employees celebrated the win as much as fans did. A woman in a corrections department uniform posed for a picture with a “Let’s Go Knicks” banner, while sanitation vehicles bore portraits of Knicks players. Firefighters caught a few of the Knicks T-shirts the team’s coach, Mike Brown, threw from a parade float.
The parade left Broadway sidewalks covered in deep piles of shredded paper and confetti. After the floats carrying Knicks players passed, fans began throwing it into the air, yelling, “It’s snowing! Knicks in five!”
Mamdani ordered municipal buildings illuminated in the team’s orange-and-blue colors for the parade, mirroring numerous landmarks on the city’s skyline, which were lit up in Knicks colors throughout the playoffs.
(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Paul Thomasch, David Gaffen, Daniel Wallis and Bill Berkrot)
Read more Top US Energy Regulator Pushes Grids to Overhaul Data Center Power Rules
Copyright 2026 Thomson Reuters.
