Knicks championship brings generations of Riverdale fans together in celebration

For lifelong Knicks fans, waiting has become something of a civic duty. New Yorkers waited through disappointments, coaching changes and decades of near misses. On June 13, after 53 years, the Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 to win game five and clinch the Finals 4-1.

The decades of waiting finally gave way to a historic celebration.

On June 18, millions of fans, Riverdalians among them, poured into lower Manhattan for the New York Knicks’ first ticker-tape parade since 1973, transforming the Canyon of Heroes — a one-mile strip of Broadway running from Battery Park to City Hall — into a sea of blue and orange. At 4 a.m. that morning, Rob Rodriguez, 46, woke his 17-year-old son, Jack Rodriguez, and headed downtown in an Uber from Riverdale as far as a car could get them.

“It already was absolutely mobbed by 5:30, which is what time we stepped foot on Liberty Street and walked toward Broadway,” said Rob Rodriguez.

Navigating the streets on foot quickly proved hopeless, he said. “In true New Yorker fashion,” the pair hopped on the R train to Times Square, transferred to the 2, and rode it back down to Fulton Street just to cover a few blocks.

When they emerged, they joined scores of others staking out viewing spots hours before the first float rolled past just after 10 a.m. Despite the crush of people, Rob Rodriguez said the atmosphere remained remarkably upbeat.

Like many New Yorkers of his generation, Rob Rodriguez grew up on the Knicks teams of the 1990s, idolizing the legendary Patrick Ewing. Now, he shares that fandom with his son through annual Christmas Day trips to Madison Square Garden and near-nightly family viewings during the season.

After the parade, Rob Rodriguez and his son made their way to City Hall for the coveted Knicks championship ceremony. Rob Rodriguez said he wished a few more players had spoken beyond Jalen Brunson, the team’s captain, but he lit up at the sight of the Knicks alumni in attendance — his favorite player chief among them.

“Patrick Ewing was my Jalen Brunson back in the day,” Rob Rodriguez said, adding that watching the organization embrace its former players throughout the season and the playoff run had been one of his favorite parts of the season.

“Once a Knick, always a Knick,” he said

Mayor Zohran Mamdani had announced two days before the parade, on June 16, that the city would give away 600 free tickets to the ceremony, with a lottery selecting 300 winners who would each receive two passes. Robert Keating, another lifelong Riverdale resident, was among those who snagged a spot.

Keating, 57, was alive the last time the Knicks won a championship in 1973, but he was only 4 years old and has no memory of it. He became a fan during the bruising battles of the 1990s, he said.

“It became a team in the ‘80s, ‘90s when Patrick Ewing, John Starks, Charles Oakley, and Michael Jordan used to have some hard-fought battles,” Keating said. “I mean battles, epic battles.”

Unfortunately, he missed Thursday’s parade entirely. A health scare pulled him away that morning. He made it to City Hall just in time for the ceremony.

Watching this Knicks team had become more than a pastime for Keating, a retired correction officer, police officer and firefighter who spent decades working in lower Manhattan, including through Sept. 11. The championship run had become a historic event worth following far from his TV.

He was at Madison Square Garden for game four of the championship, when the Knicks erased a 29-point third-quarter deficit.

“You could feel the garden moving,” he said, “People high-fiving each other, hugging each other... it was beer being spilled all over.”

He called it one of those moments “you just don’t forget.”

He then traveled to San Antonio for the title-clinching fifth game after discovering it was cheaper to fly south and buy a standing-room arena ticket than purchase a Finals seat in New York.

“Three hundred dollars for the ticket, $500 for airfare, the hotel, so it was about $1,100,” he said, versus a New York seat that “you couldn’t get below $4,000.”

There, Brunson scored a Knicks Finals-record 45 points to close out the San Antonio Spurs and claim the Bill Russell Trophy as Finals MVP.

Thursday brought another stroke of luck. Keating entered the city’s raffle for tickets to the ceremony at City Hall and won.

“I had to pinch myself and say, am I really here? Just witnessed this in the flesh,” he said after watching Karl-Anthony Towns hoist and kiss the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

Brunson took the stage to chants of “MVP! MVP!” After thanking the Knicks’ owner and front office for “believing in a kid no one else would,” he turned to the crowd.

“Somehow, some way, I knew we were going to find a way to get this done,” he said.

He closed by thanking the fans.

At City Hall, Mayor Mamdani told the crowd, “For as long as we live, we will remember this feeling of a city together, a city alive, a city overcome by happiness.”

Keating, who was seated nearly front and center, said the speech captured “the essence and the spirit” of what the win means to the city.

Through the Knicks’ 13-game winning streak in the playoffs, Keating wore the same O.G. Anunoby jersey to every game — and never once washed it. He finally did the laundry the day after the City Hall ceremony.

He plans to keep the streak going next season, too. To him, and many other fans in the city, the championship represented the culmination of decades spent hoping.

“It means that in my lifetime, I can actually say that I saw the Knicks winning the championship, and I can rest easy that at least it happened in my lifetime,” he said. “To actually see my team actually win and bring it home, it means everything.”

The feeling, he said, stirred something else in him — a memory of the city in a very different moment. The outpouring of unity reminded him of other moments in the city’s history, particularly after 9/11 when New Yorkers rallied side by side.

“It brought people together that don’t even know each other,” he said. “You forget your differences.”