“New York or nowhere,” fans of the New York Knicks are fond of saying. But on Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday, 600 of the basketball team’s supporters chose a third option: a sports bar opposite Victoria Station, on the ground floor of an office building housing several consulting firms, with at least three fake zebra heads mounted on the walls.
“Is there anywhere else in the UK right now?” said Claire, a Welsh Knicks fan who had travelled with her wife, Lindsay, from Anglesey to Greenwood Sports Pub & Kitchen. It was the fifth game of the championship finals and the Knicks were playing the Spurs. If the Knicks won, it would be their fourth victory against the Spurs in the finals, clinching them the title for the first time in 53 years. Claire and Lindsay watched Thursday’s game from home. The Knicks reversed the Spurs’ 29-point-lead to achieve the biggest comeback in any NBA finals game ever. “We both had work the next day and woke the neighbours up with our screaming at 5am. It was worth it.” Now, they were surrounded by hundreds of other fans who had managed to get a ticket to Greenwood’s watch party before they sold out. They danced to “Empire State of Mind”, “Jenny from the Block” and “American Girl” while bartenders wearing “Always Knicks” T-shirts doled out espresso martinis and Red Bulls before the 1.30am tip-off.
The bar was packed when I arrived at 11.30pm, half an hour before it would usually close – it was staying open until 5am for the occasion. Though there are other American sports bars in London, Greenwood’s watch party had been advertised by the NBA itself, and fans on Reddit proclaim it the unofficial London home of the Knicks. Though most attendees I spoke to were American, the most ardent ones were British, their support strengthened by years of late night games and early morning losses. It seems the further away from New York you go, the easier it is to call yourself a New Yorker – the definition of which has been hotly debated in recent weeks – and many Americans I spoke with hailed from an hour or so outside the city.
There is also a sense in which an allegiance to the Knicks is more of a cultural homage than a sporting dedication (though I was taught what “dribble penetration” means over the course of the night). The Knicks hadn’t competed in the NBA finals since 1999, but they had featured in songs, in films, in TV shows and in countless Daily Mail spreads as celebrities’ date night of choice. New Yorkers are mostly born into Knicks fandom: the Knicks are the third most popular NBA team in the US while the city’s other team, the Brooklyn Nets, have the third smallest fanbase. For the British fans I met – all of whom had been watching Knicks games for several years at least – their initial reason for picking the Knicks as their team of choice tended to be fairly random: “I love New York, Friends, all of that shit,” said one man who has supported the team for a decade.
On Thursday, the Knicks’ win eclipsed New York: there were street parties across the city, parole officers let prisoners on house arrest stay out past their curfew and Madison Square Garden teemed with orange and blue clad celebrities. On Saturday night, in Greenwood, giant cut-outs of the players were periodically hoisted into the air (I was hit on the head with number 25 at a particularly fraught point in the game), and there were chants of “My mayor’s Muslim, my bagel’s Jewish; my heart-rate’s fried, Knicks in five.” It wasn’t what you might expect from a London sports bar, particularly on a World Cup night. They were screening Brazil v Morocco, but it had been relegated to a smaller room upstairs. Later in the night, I saw a man at the bar with a Knicks bib layered over his Brazil jersey.
The Knicks are not used to winning like this, and their streak of success this series led to accusations from hardcore fans of fair-weather supporters and “Knicks for clicks” (influencers employing the playoffs in bids for virality). Though interest in the team has surged in the UK – from Wednesday to Sunday, UK Google searches for the Knicks increased by 93 per cent – those in Victoria on Saturday night were serious fans. A trio wearing three-quarter zips tried to enter in the final ten minutes (when a win was starting to feel tangible and the shouting was near-constant), but they were denied entry. This was not a night for those who had drifted from a work night out, looking for any bar that was still open. I got the impression that participation in the game was ring-fenced for the committed. Tickets for the match itself could be purchased for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but only proven fans were truly welcome; the week before, an ESPN Network host commentating on the game at Madison Square Garden said of Taylor Swift, who was sat courtside, “She’s not a Knicks fan, get out of here girl.” In an iconically capitalist city, being a Knicks fan is something money alone cannot buy.
Harry and Sulli, from London, had been testing the bar’s patrons on Knicks trivia. “Everyone we’ve spoken to, we’ve made sure they’re not a bandwagon.” (I braced myself. The closest I’d come to engaging with basketball before this night was playing netball for my school’s F-team). The pair were from London, but Sulli had baby photos of himself in Knicks jerseys. “My uncle really got into it in the nineties when we got to the finals,” he said. “Obviously, since then, it’s been downhill. But in the UK we’re loyal to our teams – we don’t switch up.” Harry agreed, “I love an underdog. I’m a West Ham fan in the UK, so it’s very similar.”
And though the Knicks were 3-1 games up in the series by Saturday night, they still felt like the underdogs: they hadn’t won the series since 1973, and were known for losing for the majority of a game before taking the lead in its final moments. In every game of the Finals so far, they were losing by double figures in the first quarter. At Greenwood, the cheers were loudest when the Knicks were further behind – the boos reached equal magnitude when the Spurs took a penalty shot, or Sydney Sweeney, in the crowd, flashed up on the screens. At about 2.30am I heard a shriek: “Timothee!” A table of exchange students from Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology had spotted Chalamet onscreen. Two of the group, Audrey and Cecilia, had come to this bar for a few of the games, and they’d brought their less committed friends along tonight. Though they were sad to be away from their hometown, they were using the all-nighter as an excuse to beat the queues at EggSlut, where they would head straight to brunch after the inevitable celebrations. Three different groups told me they planned to go to Notting Hill for the first time on Sunday; they were tourists in London, but in this bar there was no doubt that I was the foreigner.
Audrey and Cecilia were wearing orange Knicks T-shirts, which they slept in every game day. Another woman showed me her lucky hoop earrings – silver and sparkly. But most people echoed the same sentiment: the Knicks don’t need superstition. “We’ve got hustle and grit.” Oh, and it helps that they’ve got divine intervention in their corner: “We have the pope on our side,” one New Yorker explained to me. In the third game of the finals, Spike Lee wore a basketball jersey declaring “Pope Leo”, complete with a papal signature.
It does take a certain delusional stamina to stay up until nearly 5am watching a game that you are mostly losing in a country that largely doesn’t care. By half time the score was Knicks 37-42 Spurs. People sat on the rail at the bottom of the bar, on ledges by the cash machine or the tops of booths. They were down by eight with seven minutes to go, then by four with six minutes on the clock. Feet started stamping, with very American chants of “Defence” and “MVP”. Then, with under four minutes left, the Knicks were in the lead, just. When the clock finally ticked to zero and the Knicks had won by four points, it was 20 past four in the morning. Through the cheers and sound of Empire State of Mind (of course) the girl next to me pointed out to her friend that the sun has risen. “The sun always rises on the Knicks, baby,” her friend replied. Next to them, two men were hugging. “See you here next year,” they said.
[Further reading: The United States of West London]
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