The Knicks effect: why Zohran Mamdani benefits most from an NBA title

[Celerity]

Just months ago, critics were writing NYC’s obituary. Now, the first NBA championship in 53 years is in the bag, crime is down and there’s a new shine on the socialist mayor

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/new-york-knicks-nba-zohran-mamdani-qf9bkr2p3

https://archive.ph/RLBqT


Karl-Anthony Towns of the New York Knicks with Zohran Mamdani during the victory parade on Thursday
Angelina Katsanis/Getty Images

Until recent months, the people of New York have held two truths to be self-evident: first, that theirs is the greatest city on Earth, and second, that it was a lot better ten years ago. Now, a strange new conviction has settled over the five boroughs of Gotham in the gorgeous late spring sunshine that they are living through a renaissance. That New York is back, baby, and better than ever. On Saturday night the New York Knicks won their first championship since 1973, sending the city into paroxysms of joy. Generations had grown up in a world where the Knicks were a joke. Following them was a penance for celebrities like Spike Lee. It was not supposed to be fun.


New York Knicks fans in Times Square Adam Gray/Getty Images

Then the Knicks triumphed by four games to one against the San Antonio Spurs, and New York was lifted into a new golden epoch. Strangers gave each other high fives and subway passengers looked each other in the eye. The entire city seemed to punch the air. “New York is unbelievable right now,” said Johnny Donovan, 40, who works in entertainment, standing on a Midtown pavement outside the NBA store, where several hundred people were queueing on Monday evening to buy New York Knicks’ gear. “Everybody is getting along, people are opening doors. They are living an experience that for years to come people will talk about. Ten years from now, to their kids, they are going to be saying: ‘We experienced that.’”


The parade on Broadway AP Photo/Richard Drew

Tony Conlon, 55, from Brooklyn, who works for UPS, was sitting on the back of a delivery truck with a half-finished coffee, looking with amazement at the Knicks-gear-buying masses filing past along the pavement. He thought of two friends, who did not live to see it. “A lot of people weren’t here to see it. I might not be around to see the next one,” he said. “People are shaking hands and touching you and high-fiving you. Strangers!” On Thursday morning, five days after they clinched the title, the players progressed up the Canyon of Heroes like astronauts, or victorious generals, through a blizzard of blue and orange confetti. Fans began arriving in the small hours of the morning, steadily packing Lower Manhattan, overflowing subway stations and climbing lamp posts and barricades. Spike Lee was there. “It’s like the city was anticipating something and this is it,” said Conlon. “It’s similar to 9-11,” he said, before adding, with bracing understatement: “But on a happier note.”



The city’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who is not a man to let an epochal event like this slide by without recording half a dozen social media videos, expressed the same idea the morning after the Knicks clinched the championship. Benji Cohen, 32, founder of New Yorkers Live, which records man-on-the-street interviews with people all over the city, interviewed the 34-year-old mayor in his Gracie Mansion home on Sunday. “The country’s biggest city has become the world’s smallest town,” Mamdani said. “What’s so beautiful is oftentimes in our city, that sense of unity comes together in a moment of tragedy. It’s a beautiful thing that it’s coming together in a moment of joy.” Even the mayor’s traditional political adversaries are now embracing him in the afterglow of the victory. An editorial in the New York Post declared on Sunday: “At last, something Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Post see eye to eye on.” On Wednesday, the Knicks’ owner, James Dolan, announced the team had accepted an invitation to the White House to visit President Trump.



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[luv2fly]

1. Visiting tRump

"... the Knicks’ owner, James Dolan, announced the team had accepted an invitation to the White House to visit President Trump."

Dolan is a tRump supporter, but I hope a WHOLE lot of the players don't go.