While there were some violent revelers Saturday night, Boomer Esiason applauds most of New York for celebrating the Knicks’ NBA Finals win with joy.
The New York Knicks are NBA champions for the first time in 53 years after beating the San Antonio Spurs in five games. Five years after Knicks fans were mocked for celebrating a first-round playoff win over the Atlanta Hawks by spilling out of Madison Square Garden to shut down Seventh Avenue, the entire city could now join in celebrating a championship.
In the aftermath of Saturday night’s celebrations, there were reportedly 63 arrests, one 17-year-old was shot, and one school bus was torched and destroyed. Despite the negativity bias, Boomer Esiason believes the vast majority of New Yorkers who celebrated joyously deserve recognition.
“They lit the bus on fire the other night. And there’s a woman swinging something at the front of the bus, and I’m like, I hope they got her picture, and they go and talk to her and say, ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ I don’t know, was she taking something out in her own life on the bus? I have no idea what the hell she was doing,” Esiason admitted on his Monday morning WFAN radio show with co-host Gregg Giannotti.
“But given the amount of people that live here, the amount of Knick fans that are here, I would think that even though there were some people that crossed the line, 99.9% of the people were just genuinely happy. You saw people arm and arm, you saw Black and white, you saw all different types of people, which is what New York City is, and you saw them all celebrating together with a genuine joy…when you take everything into account and the amount of people that are involved here, the New York City police department and fire department did an amazing job again, as (NYPD Police Commissioner) Jessica Tisch pointed out.”
The NBA might not be as big as the NFL, but New York rallies around the Knicks in a way that no other franchise does. The area is split on the Jets and Giants, the Mets and Yankees, and the Rangers and Islanders. But even though the Brooklyn Nets have their own fanbase, New York is still dominated by Knicks fans. Hopefully, Thursday’s ticker-tape parade will be similarly filled with joy as the Knicks take their first trip through the Canyon of Heroes in franchise history.
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