There is something in the air in New York, and it’s orange and blue.
The city is crackling with a particular electricity that results only from the combination of excellent temperatures, a low dew point and a winning home team. Anecdotal evidence suggests that people have been warmer to one another in exchanges on the subway. Practically everywhere you look, there are small tributes to this year’s team and the prospect — stronger by the day — of its being the first set of Knicks to go all the way since John V. Lindsay was mayor.
But New Yorkers are not a monolith, and while some yell out “Let’s go Knicks!” at every given opportunity, others are impervious to the buzz.
Wednesday night, as much of the city was glued to their TVs for Game 1 of the N.B.A. finals, Yvette Romero went to see “Ragtime” on Broadway. On her walk home, she came across young people making “happy noises,” she said.
“I didn’t know what it was for, because I didn’t even know they were in the playoffs,” said Romero, a publishing industry retiree who was walking through Central Park on Thursday afternoon. “I don’t follow professional sports at all — nothing against basketball — so I did not know anything.”
Romero moved to New York in 1975 for “the culture, the museums and the theater, and things like that,” and has not been keeping tabs on the Knicks’ explosive sprint to the championship. Even when confronted with a crowd of euphoric Knicks fans, she came away confused.
“It is a lot of fun, and I think it’s great that people get behind their teams,” Romero said. “I think that’s wonderful. It’s just not my focus.”
On Friday, the entire city felt like a giant Game 2 watch party. (Like Game 1, Friday night’s face-off was held in San Antonio.) Some set up projectors to display the game; others crowded sidewalks to watch. A bunch of jubilant fans crept onto Pennsylvania Plaza outside Madison Square Garden to express their raucous joy, but of course, some New Yorkers remained oblivious.
Vanessa Armstrong, 33, was at least minimally aware of the game because her colleagues spent all day talking about it, she said while waiting in line outside the Broadhurst Theater for a performance of “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.”
“The most I know about it is that Mamdani signed that executive order so that the kids get to stay up late,” she said, referring to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s order repealing bedtimes for the duration of the Knicks’ finals run. “It was very cute and very iconic.” But that’s where her knowledge of organized sports begins and ends. “I am indifferent, because I am a stereotypical trans girl. I know nothing about sports aside of what my little brother tells me.”
Still, she said, she doesn’t need to keep up with free-throw percentages and other post-game stats to eventually enjoy the celebrations if the Knicks pull it off.
“Maybe if it gets closer the actual, like, final finals, I might be roped into something or another because I love an event,” she said, adding, “When do they play?” before she walked into the theater.
Shayne Zaslow, 40, might have to field that question at work, he said. Zaslow, a data analyst at the New York City Department of Education, gets most of his sports knowledge from his co-workers.
“I know the Knicks made, like, whatever the big final playoff thing is for basketball,” he said. “I know that people are really excited about it and that it hasn’t happened for a long time.”
So what does he do while the city is in an orange-and-blue frenzy?
“I spin my own yarn,” he said.
Even so, he is happy for all involved.
“In general, as long as nobody’s harming anybody, I genuinely want people to express joy for the things that bring them joy,” he said. “Sports isn’t for me, but I know some people are really into it. And I love that for you.”
As Knicks fans assembled at Madison Square Garden on Friday for an away-game watch party hosted by the venue, Manuel Buestan, 71, was unlocking his bike on West 37th Street and Seventh Avenue. He was heading home to Queens after a long day of cleaning offices.
“I may have heard of it, but I’m not a fan of that — I don’t know about sports,” Buestan said in Spanish as he secured a plastic bag on the basket on his bike with a bungee cord.
“I have heard that it is the championship, but where is it — is it in New Jersey or here?”
