New York Knicks fans flooded the streets of Lower Manhattan on Thursday to watch a ticker-tape parade celebrating the newly crowned NBA champions, capping a dream season for one of basketball's most long-suffering franchises.
Thousands of people were already camped out behind police barricades in the pre-dawn hours for what Mayor Zohran Mamdani said could be the largest parade in the city's history. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who estimated the crowd could number in the millions, ordered the deployment of 10,000 officers to the parade route.
The Knicks' dominant run through the NBA playoffs, which included wins in 15 of their last 16 games and featured a number of improbable comebacks, electrified this sports-mad city. Saturday's victory in Game 5 of the NBA Finals over the San Antonio Spurs sealed the team's first title in 53 years, sparking celebrations in the streets across the city's five boroughs as fans streamed out of packed bars, frenzied fan zones and impromptu watch parties.
The parade will start at 10 a.m. near the southern tip of Manhattan and proceed to City Hall, where Mamdani will present the team with symbolic keys to the city. Knicks stars such as NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns and OG Anunoby were expected to ride atop floats down the "Canyon of Heroes," the strip of Broadway that wends through the Financial District.
Singer-songwriter Alicia Keys will serenade the revelers, according to Knicks owner James Dolan. Viral videos following the team's 94-90 clinching victory on Saturday showed hundreds of fans celebrating on the streets singing the 2009 hit "Empire State of Mind," an unofficial city anthem she recorded with a fellow New Yorker, rapper Jay-Z.
140 years of ticker-tape parades
New York's tradition of ticker-tape parades began spontaneously when the Statue of Liberty was unveiled in 1886 and office workers celebrated by throwing stock ticker tape used to print financial data out of their windows. When ticker tape became obsolete, it was replaced by confetti.
The Downtown Alliance, a nonprofit focused on improving Lower Manhattan, has delivered 2,500 pounds (1,134 kg) of shredded paper to 22 buildings along the route. Tenants will be responsible for raining down confetti on the victorious players and coaches.
"We advise not to throw it in big clumps and meter it out for the whole parade," Andrew Breslau, the alliance's senior vice president for communications, said in an email.
Mamdani has ordered municipal buildings illuminated in the team's orange-and-blue colors on the day of the parade. The subway stop at Madison Square Garden has already been painted orange and blue, and even the city's fiscal watchdog used those colors for the charts in its latest financial report.
Ahead of the parade, hundreds of New Yorkers signed petitions urging authorities to reschedule citywide science exams scheduled for Thursday so kids can join the fun.
"A Knicks championship is history in the making,” one of the petitions read. "Our children, who are the heartbeat of this city’s future and its biggest fans, deserve to be part of that history.”