Of all the joy blooming throughout the Knicks championship run, the most visible has been the jubilant transfer of energy from body to body. A wave of dance has swept through the city:
Popping up in and around buses (in some cases, brooms necessary):
And even grooving while balancing a television screen on a head, which shows how daring some of these dancers could be:
Late Wednesday night, after the Knicks staged a shocking comeback over the Spurs to win by a single point, viewers, bound together by incredulous bliss, decided on a dance language without saying a word. They jumped and jumped, celebrities and all. Videos circulating on social media showed Timothée Chalamet to be a part of this bouncing phenomenon, leaping into an impromptu mosh pit with fellow members of the Knicks-obsessed. In this moment fans are fans. And any fan can be a dancer.
Along with making this the summer of blue and orange skies, the New York Knicks gave the city the gift of spontaneous dancing. Fans are flooding social media with videos of euphoric movement. There are no cultural barriers in this feast of victory dancing; it’s about sharing a stage in the open air.
In Times Square, dancers anchored joyful spins with linked arms, then gave space for light, shuffling kicks — fueling the street with that Knicks spirit of inclusivity.
Here a whimsical version of the robot emerges. In this duet, two fans match up, arm for arm.
Reacting body to body makes sense. I’ve always felt like the Knicks were professional basketball’s equivalent of modern dance. Salaries aside, the Knicks, like the early and present-day modern dancers, have always fought, or at least tried their best, to get the job done. They hustle. They’re scrappy and raw. Pretty shots happen, but the effort of getting there — the weaving and winding in-between execution — has just as much if not more to offer than the power move of a dunk.
It can get ugly. But when the Knicks fail, they “begin again,” in the words of the modern dance master Merce Cunningham.
To Cunningham, each new day afforded a dancer a new lease on life. Likewise for the Knicks. You miss a shot, you move on. To those of us who have stuck with the team in good times and bad — when the abandon on the court had more to do with reckless brawls than daring, behind-the-back passes — it feels like we have fought alongside the Knicks. As if we were all part of the same body, in the same state of flow, the same “Empire State of Mind.”
With Knicks fever so all-consuming, reacting with movement makes sense. As the players fought to win the championship, they filled our eyes and hearts with an addictive, almost brutal momentum. A dancing response was only natural. As this post shows, it pours out of our bodies in stops and stutters and good humor, as we find a flow, our flow.
In dance and in basketball, there is a sweet spot that takes years of training to find and conquer. How, in Game 4, did OG Anunoby dash forward from so far away to tip the ball into the basket? It was like watching a phantom — blurry but clear — move through a body. He found that ever-elusive flow state. The spirit moved him.
The same is true for the dancing public. Watching basketball is a collective experience. It was fitting that the Knicks brought on the urge to dance. But it has been about more than just release. It was a physical manifestation of basketball’s inherent drama. Here, with keen theatrical instincts, a young breaker parted the crowd for a backflip after Game 4:
And then decided to start his power moves all over again.
The exuberance mirrors what you saw in the arena as the Knicks demonstrated how they learned to play as a team — or, as this post notes, like a dance company working together with a collaborative spirit. Teamwork is the only path to glory, and when the Knicks play well, they do so as one. Their kinesthetic awareness is part of what you feel on the court. Here, in warm-up drills, they hone it so they can breathe as one when it really matters.
As the sign in the background of this sly and, as we now know, overly optimistic sweep dance attests (“Good Vibes Only”), the mood and motivation of this movement explosion are rare: untainted happiness. The Knicks, the Astaire to our Rogers, have helped us find our groove. A flow state is there for the taking, even when you’re dancing in a secret celebration all alone in your room.
