Ticker.
Tape.
Parade.
James Dolan
On the future of the Knicks:
“We’re gonna keep working to bring you even better basketball. Although it’s hard to imagine that we get much better than this. But we will, right fellas?”
On delivering a championship to New York City:
“When I look out over the Knick fans here, you all don’t look older than 53 years. Some of you weren’t waiting 53; you weren’t born
yet, but we’re very, very happy to have brought you a championship. I’m very proud of our team.”
Mike Brown
On Knicks fans and playing at Madison Square Garden:
“Playing in front of you guys when we had our ups was fantastic, but you’re the most knowledgeable foundation in the whole NBA. Your guys’ energy when we had our downs was off the charts, and I want to thank you for it. There’s nothing better than walking into the iconic building of MSG and getting down night after night after night in front of you guys. You guys made us feel the energy that brought us over the hump when we didn’t feel like playing, when our game wasn’t at the top again.”
Jalen Brunson
On believing the Knicks would finish the job:
“Somehow, some way. I knew we were going to find a way to get this done. Most importantly, thank you to the fans. Not gonna lie, though, y’all. Y’all are some pretty hard critics, but we appreciate it.”
On winning the championship:
“Damn, we really did it, dawg.”
On his critics and doubters:
“There’s a lot of people who have a lot of opinions. But when you prove them wrong, you really ought to, you don’t have to say s–t to them. Nah, they don’t deserve it.”
Miles McBride
On the championship parade:
“Couldn’t have imagined a better turnout. Thank you, Knicks nation.”
Tyler Kolek
On being mistaken for a fan and nearly tackled by the cops:
“I swear I’m on the team, bro.”
Leon Rose
On Mike Brown and the coaching staff:
“Mike Brown and our entire coaching staff, you came in this season with enormous expectations and completely exceeded them, and you did it with so much class that resonated with New Yorkers.”
Walt Frazier
On the championship parade crowd:
“This has exceeded any expectations I ever saw that we had. I mean, when we played, everybody was from the USA, so mainly our audience was black and white, but now they’re Hispanics, they’re Chinese, all different races that follow the NBA. It’s just been a magnificent thing to witness.”
On the 1973 celebration:
“That day was a lot of hoopla for us. Maybe we had 200 people here and some dignitaries, so we were very happy with that.”
On seeing the city embrace the Knicks:
“They would be amazed at what has happened to the Knicks and how they’ve really captivated the city this year. This has exceeded any expectations I ever thought that we’d have.”
Carmelo Anthony
On the championship’s impact:
“The whole city won. New Yorkers are, as they say, ‘lit’ right now.”
Spike Lee
On attending his first championship parade:
“I’ve never been to a parade ever. But I’m glad it’s this one!”
Zohran Mamdani
On New York during the Knicks’ championship run:
“New York City has just had some of the two most magical months in as long as any of us can remember. Over these past few weeks, as the Knicks kept winning, our city has come together as one.”
On the 53-year wait:
“For 53 long years we have watched, and we have waited. We have watched from nosebleeds and through gritted teeth, on televisions in the windows of electronic stores, and from projectors balanced on fire escapes. We have watched alone in our apartments with our heads in our hands, shoulder to shoulder at bars where the signal flickers, alongside friends and family who we wish, more than anything, could be here today, sharing this moment.”
On finally seeing a championship in New York’s streets:
“We waited without ever knowing if this day would come. We waited because we knew deep down in our sick, suffering hearts that it would. New York City, this team has done it. The New York Knicks are NBA champions.”
On the parade bringing the city together:
“So often, when this city comes together, it is because we are forced to by a moment of tragedy or adversity. What a gift it is to be brought together by pure, unfiltered joy.”
On why the championship reflected New York City:
“Let’s not pretend that this was inevitable. If you will allow me, I want to travel back in time. Eight days, Game 4, nine minutes and 33 seconds left in the fourth quarter. The Knicks are down 20. The analytics guys, the sports betting companies, the pundits who watch from far away, they do what they do. They run the numbers, they calculate the odds, they write the Knicks off, they give the Spurs a 99.6% chance of winning the game, a 99.6% chance of tying up the series 2-2, of reclaiming the momentum with the next game in San Antonio, a 99.6% chance of silencing the Garden of another year of watching and waiting, but there is one thing that the pundits just don’t get about this team, they just don’t get about this city. It is in that .4% that we go to work.”
On New York’s identity:
“Most of all, it’s in that .4% that the Knicks do what New Yorkers have always done. When we are told something is impossible, we find a way, we win. Standing here before what feels like the entire city, there is a Jalen Brunson quote I can’t stop thinking about. ‘You are allowed to think about the worst possible scenario, but you got to go out there and do something about it.’ The Knicks did not just win for New York City, they won like New York City. What is New York if not your back up against the wall, a dream that feels just out of reach, a rent payment you don’t know how you’ll ever make? What is New York if not 99.6% of the world stacked against you, and who are New Yorkers if not people who hear those odds and smile, who look at a .4% chance of success and ask, why are you giving me a head start? This is our city. This is our team.”
Mark Levine
On New York’s resilience:
“We do not back down, no matter how far behind we are. We were down on 9/11, and we came back. We were down in (Hurricane) Sandy, and we came back. We were down during COVID, and we came back. We were down against the Cavs, against the Spurs and we came back. We are New York. We don’t stop fighting. You should be afraid of us. We are the champs because of the New York Knicks.”
Aaron Judge
On New York sports success:
“A Knicks championship in June and a Yankees World Series in October would bring world peace. There’s a lot of winning going on in New York, so we got to keep that going. I like the team we have. I like the opportunity we’ve got in front of us. It’s going to be an exciting rest of the year.”
On attending Game 4:
“I went to Game 4 with my wife. We were kind of worried in the third quarter, but we knew the Knicks. Like [Jalen] Brunson said: They show up about thirty minutes late, take care of business. That was a special game. Never forget it.”
RZA
On Wu-Tang’s role in the Knicks’ run:
“At the end of the day, the first thing goes to the hard work of the coach and the players. But energy is everything. Energy can multiply. And so when the Wu-Tang came with that energy, we put a spark. So I like to tell people, we lit that wick that led to that explosion.”
On the Madison Square Garden vibes after the Game 4 performance:
“The building felt different after our performance. I think eventually that energy resonated and just permeated into our great New York team. Bong bong.”
On which other game could Wu-Tang have saved:
“Game three. I’m only saying game three because, look, if Wu-Tang would’ve performed, I don’t think the President would’ve took a nap. Our President, he’s a New Yorker. When that Wu joint would’ve been on, he would’ve been like, ‘Yo, you know what? Let’s keep the party rocking.’”
Kendrick Perkins
On Vincent Goodwill calling the title a participation trophy:
“That was a bunch of bulls–t. It was all the way disrespectful, and when I heard him say it, the first thing came to mind is that your ass never was an athlete then. You couldn’t have never participated or been a basketball player or played on anybody’s team talking that type of nonsense. That was the most asinine thing that I’ve ever heard.”
On Goodwill’s disrespect of current and past champions:
“You disrespect the guys who are champions by saying it’s a participation trophy. Like what the f–k are we talking about? Do you know that one in those eight teams that won over the last eight years, one of them was Steph Curry. And I guarantee you if you go ask Steph Curry which one of them was his greatest championship, nine times out of ten he’s going to say the fourth one, not just because he won Finals MVP but because he had to overcome the obstacle of being a defensive liability. And he did that.”
On the need for more media responsibility:
“As the media, we have a f–king responsibility, man, to make sure that we say and do the right things. We don’t go on the stage, on the platform, right after somebody just been crowned champions and call that s–t a participation trophy. Even if you’re thinking that, you don’t say that.”
Alex Moss
On creating the Knicks Larry O’B pendant:
“I knew they were going to win. I f—king knew they were going to win this thing. So I made it.”
On supporting New York creators:
“I think that it’s important to embrace people from this city who are doing great things for the city. We live and breathe New York, everyone in the company. Imagine if someone like Jason of Beverly Hills was making the Knicks pieces. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Stephen A. Smith
On Jalen Brunson saving the NBA from French-mad copycatters:
“He [Brunson] literally saved the NBA because if Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs had captured an NBA championship, everybody would be evolving their game planning, their drafting, their analysis and everything that come with it. Everything would have been evolving around ‘How we do knock off the [7-foot-4] alien from France?’”
On Brunson’s influence on basketball:
“To see him [Brunson] play and to use his marvelous footwork, basketball IQ, poise, seasoning and fearlessness… to see him do that, just think about what that would mean to everybody. Think about what that does for the game of basketball. Without him winning this title, our default position would’ve been ‘How are we going to deal with the [7-foot-4] alien’?”
On drafting taller players to counter Wembanyama:
“You would’ve seen cats who might’ve been inferior talent, but they would’ve still turned around and drafted them anyway just because they were 6-foot-10 or 6-foot-11 or 7-feet tall because you need height when you’re going up against Wemby.”
On the Knicks being the best team in the East for 2027:
“We’re gonna keep it a buck. [The] New York Knicks shouldn’t be the favorites next season, even if they are the champions. If you know basketball and you’re covering basketball, you know what happened this year. You could look at this team and legitimately say the New York Knicks deserve to be the favorites coming out of the East. Without question, the Knicks should be the favorites to represent the Eastern Conference in next year’s NBA Finals — not the Celtics. I don’t give a damn if Jayson Tatum is healthy, okay?
On the Thunder being the No. 1 team in the West:
“We can’t put anything past the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Oklahoma City Thunder were in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. The Oklahoma City Thunder were without Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell, your second and third [best] scorers.
“When [Williams] is healthy, you can’t key on [Shai Gilgeous-Alexander] the way [the Spurs] did, double and triple teaming him. As a result, the reigning two-time MVP is free to get loose…so gotta look at it from that standpoint. Ajay Mitchell, some were debating whether he was better than Jalen Williams or not, that’s how much of a stud they both are, and they were both out.”
On his 2027 NBA Finals prediction:
“If they’re healthy, they beat the Spurs in the conference finals. Spurs ain’t in the Finals, they beat the Spurs and they would’ve been favored over the Knicks. So I think because that’s the reality, Oklahoma City is number one, Knicks number two and then everybody else is behind them. I believe right now, if you’re making a prediction, it should be the New York Knicks and the Oklahoma City Thunder will meet one another in the NBA Finals next year.”
