Euphoric Knicks fans flood New York for championship ticker-tape parade
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NEW YORK, June 18 : 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 an NBA championship.
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 NBA playoffs electrified this sports-mad city that had grown used to falling short year after year. It featured a number of improbable comebacks, culminating with Saturday's victory in Game 5 of the NBA Finals over the San Antonio Spurs that ended its 53-year title drought.
Knicks players, including NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby and Brooklyn-born Jose Alvarado drew cheers as they arrived downtown, along with Knicks stars of yesteryear such as Patrick Ewing and Walt "Clyde" Frazier, who led the team to titles in 1970 and 1973.
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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 parade got underway after 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT) near the southern tip of Manhattan; it will proceed to City Hall, where Mamdani will present the team with symbolic keys to the city.
Saturday's victory sparked sometimes chaotic celebrations in the streets across the city's five boroughs as fans streamed out of packed bars, frenzied fan zones and impromptu watch parties.
Thousands lined up along the route erupted in cheers when Knicks player Jeremy Sochan jumped out of one of the buses with the trophy — a silver basketball plunging into a net — and showed it to jubilant crowds. Sochan joined the Knicks after leaving the Spurs in February, months before the teams met in the finals.
Celebrity Knicks fans were also on hand, including movie director Spike Lee — a courtside presence at Madison Square Garden for decades — actor Timothee Chalamet, and lifestyle guru Martha Stewart.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who estimated the crowd could number in the millions, ordered the deployment of 10,000 officers to the parade route.
Singer-songwriter Alicia Keys will serenade the revelers. 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 Keys 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.
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.
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