The Knicks finally won a title. I don't know what to do with myself.

· Yahoo Sports

The thing I noticed most of all as I walked through the humanity streaming into the streets of Manhattan minutes after the New York Knicks won their first championship in 53 years -- even typing that somehow doesn't feel right -- is this: Fans like myself didn't know what to do.

Visit syntagm.co.za for more information.

After the screaming, jumping around, hugging a few strangers and trying to capture it all on phones, there was this glassy-eyed confusion. For me, it was a floating feeling that carried me through the streets. What do you do when you've spent 44 of those 53 years on this Earth rooting for a franchise perpetually stuck in the mud, one that's been on the wrong end of miracles so many times, the one that the marquee free-agent names of the NBA avoided for so many years? What do I do with my hands? How do you tell your brain to process what this means? I just kept walking.

A friend and I had decided to tempt fate and watch the fourth quarter of Game 5 on Saturday at whatever bar we could find that was decently close to Madison Square Garden. With police prepared with metal barriers that would prevent anyone going too far downtown, the mass of fans I joined walked down Sixth Avenue until we were blocks from Macy's on 34th Street. I called my wife and son and my die-hard Knicks fan dad. I thought about my maternal grandfather who had spent years yelling at the TV when the Knicks played. Then I watched citizens jump on trucks stuck in the chaos and light fireworks and buy $20 unofficial Knicks championship t-shirts from a dude on the corner. But that feeling of what it meant eluded me.

The dichotomy -- is it technically a dichotomy? I don't know, I didn't get a lot of sleep! -- of being a Knicks fan has always felt a little bizarre to me. I grew up in New York, which is supposed to be the greatest city in the world (it is. Fight me.) and everything that comes with that. Yet the Knicks were the laughingstock of the NBA for decades. Miss after miss with trades. Bad draft picks while watching the players taken after blossom. Teams that would be booed off the floor at Madison Square Garden, an arena the opposing superstars of the game relished playing in so they could make it here and anywhere.

How is this result possible? The answer starts with what many IN HINDSIGHT are calling the greatest free agency signing of all time in Jalen Brunson, an unselfish star who ascended to superstardom, whose attitude was always team first on and off the court. There were the trades that critics questioned (see: all that talk in the post-title pressers about all the first-round picks the Knicks dealt for Mikal Bridges), the firing of a coach that got the team so far last year, the struggles during the 2025-26 regular season that threatened to be a cloud over the postseason.

Maybe that's part of the reason why this is so bizarre. This was a team that looked like a contender on paper, but the flaws were there. The incredible thing was watching teammates pick up when those flaws showed. Karl-Anthony Towns struggled? No problem, Bridges had himself a night. Was Brunson missing floaters? It's fine, OG Anunoby stepped up. Jose Alvarado had a Game 4 to remember. Landry Shamet caught fire for a while there. Mitchell Robinson might be the worst free-throw shooter in NBA playoff history, but there he was defending Victory Wembanyama and grabbing the late offensive rebound that helped clinch a title. Josh Hart -- traded for a first-round pick, remember that? -- did Josh Hart things.

As I headed home on the subway not long after the on-the-street festivities started, I struck up conversations with fans like myself who left the street celebrations to the younger generations. We were all exhausted and said the same thing: "It hasn't sunk in yet. Maybe tomorrow." That's what 53 years of falling short will do. It becomes part of your identity, the feeling that maybe rooting for a snakebit sports franchise is what builds character and resilience -- "we'll get 'em next year" and the like.

But now? We can stop floating through the dream and processing the reality. New York has a championship.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: What Knicks' first championship in 53 years means for New York fans

Read full story at source