I stayed up this time to watch. I lost my voice yelling at the television in those final minutes when we were still unsure of the outcome. And I celebrated as the seconds ticked down and the New York Knicks gathered at San Antonio’s center court, loved ones and fans and Spike Lee looking for hugs as they won their first NBA championship in 53 years with a 94-90 nail-biter over the Spurs.
For me, this was not about basketball.
Sure, I love basketball. I started my career covering high school sports first at the New Jersey Star Ledger, then at the New York Daily News. It was my favorite sport to cover. I was actually in the Garden as a reporter one of the last times the Knicks were thisclose to winning it all against the Chicago Bulls.
But last night was not about the sport for me.
This team, in this time, is a perfect prototype for what’s possible. The Knicks revealed what’s possible in the United States. They stand as an aspiration for how we move forward as a nation. Together. As a team.
The irony. The USA is in the midst of an identity crisis, if not a collapse, with the semi-quincentennial on the horizon—a celebration of its founding. But those foundational principles espoused by the so-called founding fathers of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” have just been unrealized ideas for a nation founded in theft and genocide, human trafficking and exploitation. These are truths. And they are self-evident.
The greatness of America has always been and will always be in the fight and the will of her people. Those who were already here. Those who came here against their will and those who ran here in search of that liberty and happiness written about in the Declaration of Independence. And what they achieved, they had to fight to get it.
It has been in sports where we have seen the contradictions and hypocrisy of America. Whether we’re talking about Joe Louis v. Max Schmeling, Jesse Owens and 17 other Americans (who were Black), including the brother of Jackie Robinson vs. Hitler in the Olympics that same year that Louis beat Schmeling.
It was Tommy Smith and John Carlos and their black-gloved fist in the air fighting against racism. It was Muhammad Ali at that table with Bill Russell, Jim Brown and Lew Alcindor (soon to become Kareem Abdul Jabbar) at the Cleveland Summit, fighting a war. It’s Colin Kaepernick taking the knee against police brutality.
The Knicks may not be obviously in opposition. It’s more subtle. This team and this win doesn’t change America, but it does reveal some things about America.
The very makeup of the team is a clue. You had a Dominican and a Puerto Rican (IKYK…because in New York, those two groups don’t typically get down with each other), there were Black men raised in privilege and wealth, and Black men raised in poverty. There was even a Black man of Nigerian descent from the Igbo tribe on the team—the global majority on full display.
While this administration spews hatred about Black people and people from other places, calling them shitholes with low IQs, this team revealed the lie. These men represented a city that told other countries to give us your “tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
New York was their refuge from poverty and oppression. And to this day, in this city, within a three-block radius, you can find a Chinatown, next to a Little Italy, next to a Curry Row—and that’s just in lower Manhattan. The No. 7 train will take you out to Queens, where one stop will be another Chinatown, followed by Little Korea, to Corona, where you will find the Thais, the Mexicans, the Colombians, and the Italians, to Little India in Jackson Heights, to the Filipino and Irish and Hispanic enclaves of Woodside to the Turks and Romanians in Sunnyside.
There’s Queensbridge, Hollis, Jamaica and Cambria Heights. Then there’s Brooklyn! It would be the fourth-largest city in the country if it were a city in its own right (and some say it is). Culture. Diversity. Eastern Parkway on Labor Day! Every Caribbean nation in the world shows up for the West Indian Day Parade, the largest parade in the United States and one of the largest carnivals in the world.
There’s Staten Island, which has been begging to secede from the union of NYC. It is home of the cops, the firefighters. But it also birthed the Wu-Tang Clan, whom I credit with helping break the bad juju brought to Game 3 at Madison Square Garden.
Oh, and did I mention that New York is the birthplace of hip hop? The Boogie Down. The Bx. The Bronx, where Diahann Carroll, Kerry Washington and Colin Powell were born. The place that formed Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Cardi B and Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
During this championship run, the Knicks reignited something so many had forgotten. That we can come together. I saw a young man rocking the tzitzit and the payot, dancing to French Montana, surrounded by Black and brown folk, sporting the orange, royal blue, white and silver snapbacks and jerseys. It was a beautiful watch and also inspiring.
For one week, the divisions that this regime and others have spent lifetimes fomenting had disappeared. In that moment, everyone was a Knick! And that meant more than being a fan of a basketball team. For one week, New York displayed the kind of community, the kind of oneness that is possible everywhere. We can come together to root for a sports team. But can we keep that same energy for what’s really important? For rights? For resources? For common humanity?
I believe we can.
While the Knicks were on a 13-game winning streak during this championship run, it ran into a brick wall of negativity when the president decided to show up to a game and kill the vibe. After the loss in Game 3, there was a consensus that his negative presence was part of the reason.
The next day, people from all walks of life were burning sage around Madison Square Garden. I saw folks with altars in their homes. People were praying. There was even holy water dashed at the Garden entrance.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
And when the Knicks came back from a 39-point deficit to win Game 4, something cracked open.
My Mayor’s still Muslim. My bagel’s still Jewish. My pope’s on our side. Knicks in 5!
They fought back not just against the San Antonio Spurs but against the forces that have been dividing us. And New York, spiritually, is one of the only places this could happen.
Of course, there’s Ellis Island with the Statue of Liberty looming on its horizon. But this is also a city with an Indigenous trail called Broadway, a Central Park, which was once the home of Seneca Village, there’s Brooklyn’s Weeksville, and the birthplace of the Harlem Renaissance, also the home of the Schomburg. And the African Burial Ground. Wall Street had auction blocks, and buried in the ground of the city are souls of Black folk, reminding those above that this is the city where dreams are made, and there’s nothing you can’t do. And if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere!
This city is the epitome of what America says she is. It’s the truth of the lie that has been told.
Its mayor is Muslim, an immigrant from Africa whose middle name is in honor of the first president of independent Ghana. He was raised by a father who teaches African studies and colonization, and a mother who had Denzel Washington as a star in one of her films. It is a city that gave us AOC and a rep named Hakeem, who could become the first Black Speaker of the House if November delivers what it has promised.
It is a city that never sleeps, full of people who you’d better never sleep on. More than that, for me, it—the city itself and the Knicks’ victory—is a reminder of what’s possible when we come together, when we fight back and don’t quit no matter what it looks like, and when we’re intentional about the goal.
While Victor Wembanyama is the heir apparent and the new face of the NBA, it is Jalen Brunson who is the spirit. He’s not the fastest, not the most athletic, certainly not the tallest. But his heart, his will, his determination…unmatched.
His dad, Rick Brunson, was a former NBA player and is a coach. They had a six-word mantra in Brunson’s home: The magic is in the work. His mother wrote those words out and taped them to the refrigerator, to the bathroom mirror, to the wall in Jalen’s bedroom. Whenever Jalen wanted to quit, he leaned on those six words.
When he was growing up, his parents told him that he could only do two: play sports, perform well in school, or hang out with friends. He had to choose. Jalen chose to devote himself to athletics and school. He said if he conquered those two, he would have plenty of time to party later.
Last night he got to party.
And so did we!
