For 53 years, Knicks fans have endured heartbreak, bad luck, and countless “maybe next years.” Now, with New York one game away from its first NBA championship, many fans would rather not take any risks.
They are performing rituals, avoiding live broadcasts and anxiously waiting for the results to go in their favour. New York City is decked out in orange and blue, and fans have a single mission: bringing the NBA Finals trophy back home.
On the Saturday morning before Game 5, fans flocked to a specially painted subway exit, a communal sign of the entire city ready for the Knicks to win.
While fans hope the celebrations begin Saturday night, they know the series isn’t over.
Trishna Sharma of Long Island has been a lifelong Knicks fan. Since the playoffs, she has been performing a special Hindu ritual to ward off the “evil eye”, which her mother performed before her marriage.
Using salt, mustard seeds and a photograph of the team, Sharma holds the ingredients in her hand and rotates her fist seven times clockwise around the image to invite positive energy. A similar ritual can be performed by rotating the hand in an anti-clockwise direction to remove negative energy, he said.
At the end of the ritual, the contents should be burnt to get rid of negative energy. Sharma won’t be doing the burnings from the bar where she’ll be watching the next game, but she plans to sacrifice them somehow.
“I will have enough [ingredients]. If I need to perform another ritual during the intermission, I am ready to do that too,” said Sharma.
He has started each playoff game with the ritual and is ready to continue it next season, regardless of how this championship series ends.
“In every situation, I will support this team, not just when they are winning,” Sharma said. “I think it’s those types of fans that make the team so special.”
Winona Foster has waited decades to see the Knicks win a championship again.
The last time she won the championship, she was 19 years old. Now 72, she thinks watching another title, this time with her children, will feel even more special.
Foster said, “I would cry. I would really cry – with happiness, really.” “I think this is it. The game, the basketball, the Knicks winning – it’s going to be phenomenal.
Even new fans have got the bug and found camaraderie.
Hiris Fozan has lived in Queens for the past decade but only arrived in the Knicks in the last two weeks. Seeing Knicks flags in his neighbourhood led him to learn more, and now he has joined the crowd.
“Suddenly, every time you go somewhere, you wear a jersey. And suddenly, you know, you are like your friends,” Fozan said.
However, you won’t catch him at any watch parties. He believes that when he watched live, the team lost – and he doesn’t see that as likely.
“I wouldn’t watch it live, not even on TV right now,” Fozan said. “Just going to read the good news after that.”
Other fans hope Game 5 will be the right atmosphere for a win. The Knicks’ only loss in the past month came in Game 3, a game that also featured a special guest in the form of President Donald Trump. Some fans felt that the additional security and restrictions on access to Madison Square Garden dampened the excitement of the first Finals home game in 27 years.
Despite players saying that Trump’s presence played no role in their loss, some fans remain unconvinced.
“I thought there was some juju in that stadium, in Madison Square Garden, that took us off our game,” said Tracy Walker, who has been a fan since the Willis Reed era. “We were out, and the referees were not for us at all.”
Celebrity fans also have their own rituals.
The most spotted wardrobe item of Jordyn Woods, the fiancée of Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns, was a custom orange bag from her clothing brand. He started bringing the bag to each game day instead of changing bags; fans gave it his name, ‘lucky bag’.
However, she could not make it to Game 3 due to security restrictions. When she brought it back in Game 4, the Knicks won.
“There’s so much attention being paid to my orange bag – it’s wonderful because it’s my brand – but it also feels like a lot of pressure! Everyone has made it such an event,” Woods told Vogue.
Ben Stiller told ESPN before Game 4’s win that he and his wife burnt all their clothes from Game 3. “As far as I’m concerned, that game was an anomaly,” Stiller said.
It’s been a fantastic time to bring Knicks fans and everyone from across town together. Dillon Chance, who was born into a fan base through his mother, believes that the collective support will bring the title to Brooklyn.
“The only thing I really want to do is make them paint this whole sky orange and blue,” Chance said. “I feel like they do, dab.”
