New York is the basketball capital of the world.
The game wasn’t invented here, but the history of it has been woven into the fabric of life in the city. There are thousands of basketball courts across the five boroughs that some of the most iconic players to ever play the game once roamed. There’s a reason that Madison Square Garden is known as the Mecca.
Now imagine being one of the millions of kids who’ve grown up in New York City, growing up a Knicks fan, and seeing the torment that the franchise
has gone through for 50 years.
Now imagine being good enough to make the NBA and getting the chance to play for said team. That alone would be fulfilling a lifelong dream, but now imagine being a key part of the team that brings a championship to a city that had been starving for one for much longer than you’ve been alive.
Fortunately, we got one of those feel good stories as a subplot of this championship run.
Jose Alvarado was born in Brooklyn on April 12, 1998, to a Mexican mother and a Puerto Rican father. He grew up in public housing, both in Brooklyn and his later home in Queens, where he came onto the basketball scene at Christ the King Regional High School.
As one of the best players in the New York circuit, winning multiple Player of the Year awards and recording a quadruple-double as a senior, he was a three-star recruit in the Class of 2017, but still ranked beneath the likes of Hameir Wright, Isaiah Washington, Mamadou Doucoure, and Keith Williams. He was heavily pursued by local schools in Seton Hall and Rutgers, but committed to play for Josh Pastner at Georgia Tech in the ACC.
Right out the gate at Georgia Tech, Alvarado was the team’s starting point guard. He averaged 12 points, 3.7 assists, 3.1 rebounds, and 1.7 steals as a freshman, but didn’t earn All-Freshman honors. His scoring was never the feature of his game, but he was the face of a Yellow Jackets program that was trying to emerge from the darkness.
After making Third-Team All-ACC as a junior, he raised his game as a senior, leading his team to its best conference record in 25 years, being named to Second-Team All-ACC, and winning ACC Defensive Player of the Year after leading the conference with 2.8 steals a game. In the ACC Championship Game, he had five steals and played every single second of a five-point win over Florida State to win the Yellow Jackets their first conference tournament title in 28 years, sending them to their first NCAA Tournament since 2010.
It was a forgettable first-round loss in Alvarado’s final game at Georgia Tech, but he had established himself as a legend at that university and hoped to continue his gritty playstyle to the next level. Unfortunately for him, 60 picks came and went, as he went undrafted in the 2021 NBA Draft before latching on with the New Orleans Pelicans for Summer League, earning a two-way contract.
He only played five games down in the G-League with the Birmingham Squadron, averaging 19.8 points, 6.8 assists, six rebounds, and 3.4 steals. His hard work and exceptional play in the G-League earned him playing time with the main club, where he quickly earned a reputation. It didn’t take long for him to start getting chippy with anyone who wanted it.
By the start of his second season in 2022-23, he was a mainstay in the Pelicans’ rotation, averaging nine points, three assists, and a steal across 61 games while gaining a penchant for his backcourt steals, earning him the nickname “Grand Theft Alvarado”.
He finished sixth in Sixth Man of the Year voting in 2023-24 and was slowly contributing more and more for a Pelicans team that was stuck in neutral. Sure, they made a pair of playoff appearances in 2022 and 2024, but they were dead on arrival with Zion Williamson hurt for both series. After averaging a career-high 10.3 points per game, albeit on career-worst efficiency, in 2024-25, he was entering a contract year with real trade value.
So after this season became lost for the Pelicans again, they shopped him on the open market. Armed with a reasonable salary of $4.5 million and a team-friendly player option in 2026-27, he would have a lot of suitors. The team that happened to come calling, though, was his hometown squad.
For Dalen Terry and two second-round picks, Alvarado had come home. His debut was on the road, but he immediately made an impact in a major rivalry game up at TD Garden against the Celtics with 12 points.
After struggling in his home debut, he had a magical moment in MSG South, splashing a career-high eight threes against the Sixers in a major blowout before the All-Star break.
From there, his impact was up and down. He’d struggle at times, but he’d be part of a major bench volt of energy in big wins over the Spurs, Rockets, and Raptors. Every other game, he was putting up a plus-minus of at least +15, a game-breaking margin. He’d go through stretches of struggle, of triumph, of trials and tribulations. Like the team itself, he waxed and waned heading into the playoffs.
But his role entering the playoffs wasn’t crystal clear. He took two DNP-CDs in early April and didn’t play in a Game 1 win against Atlanta. He played in the next two games, both losses, but didn’t make much of an impact. In Mike Brown’s nine-man rotation, he was the odd man out.
But with Landry Shamet struggling, they needed a spark off the bench, and he gave them that with some timely threes in Games 4 and 5, being a big part of the Knicks’ dominance in the final three games of that series.
He would be reduced to just 7-8 minutes a game in the Sixers series, but knocked down a three in all four games of a very uncompetitive sweep. For a guy who’s not known for his three-ball, he knew how to make a big one.
Against Cleveland, you didn’t see much of him until Game 4, where his 10-minute stint resulted in the bench mob burying a half-dead but analytically alive Cavaliers squad, outscoring them by 21 points in his minutes in the ECF clincher.
He was pretty quiet entering the Finals, but his impact was loud when he got to the biggest stage. He hit big threes to halt the Spurs’ momentum, he went right at the giant in the middle of the court with no fear, he played tenacious defense. The Knicks won his minutes by a combined 20 points through three games, but entering the fourth quarter of Game 4, the Knicks were spiraling and on the verge of relinquishing all momentum in the series.
But just then, the momentum breaker struck again. Paired with Jalen Brunson in lineups for the first time all postseason, the New York kid had the quarter of his life.
His heroics, coupled with the tremendous clutch performances by OG Anunoby and Brunson, snatched the Spurs’ soul. His Game 5 struggles didn’t matter. They climbed the mountaintop, and he was a big reason why.
His emotions after the game told the whole story. His excitement in the locker room and at the parade wrote another chapter. It’s a story of a kid from New York City being the homegrown link of a team that ended a half-century of suffering.
Many New York kids have gotten to play for the Knicks. Mark Jackson, Rod Strickland, Taj Gibson, Bernard King, Stephon Marbury, Carmelo Anthony. The list goes on and on.
Only one of them got to win a title here. That’s Jose Alvarado. An inspiration to all the young Knicks fans who live in the city, that one day, that can be them.
The title means a lot to the city, to the fans, and to the team. I suspect that it means just a bit more to Jose.
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(P&T will be doing player-by-player article tributes over the next few weeks to commemorate the special team that ended our long, half-century nightmare)
