How to unify a city

by Paolo Tarony Saisi de Chateauneuf

On Sunday, June 14th, at 5:15 in the morning, I was on the streets of Milan watching the fourth quarter of game 5 of the NBA finals between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs. Roughly 6000 km away from the streets of NYC and 9000 km from where the game was being held, I was surely not the only knickerbocker glued to a screen in the streets of Milan. As the final buzzer rang, Mike Breen, the famous NBA commentator, ecstatically announced, “It’s over, it’s over, Knick Fans this is not a dream, your long, long, wait is ended, go on ahead and cry, after 53 years, the Knicks are finally NBA champions again”. Upon hearing those words, I screamed so loud that my voice echoed through the quiet, empty alleyways of Milan. Never would I have imagined I would find five other New Yorkers on Via Valenza, watching the same game, rooting for the same team, at five in the morning. It was extraordinary; we cheered, shouted “Knicks in Five,” and hugged for at least five minutes until neighbours above told us to be quiet.

The next day, I texted my friends living in New York, asking them how the celebrations went. They described it as something they hadn’t seen before in the city, a testament to the pain Knick fans had endured for five decades. As the celebrations ushered through the streets of the five boroughs, people sang, gathered and left aside their differences to celebrate the Knicks’ victory. In the East and West Village, crowds sang a cappella New York, New York by Frank Sinatra alongside Empire State of Mind by Alicia Keys—a fervour remarkable even by the standards of the city that never sleeps. It was while watching these videos that I was reminded of the words of Nelson Mandela after the springboks won the rugby world cup : “Sport has the power to change the world, [and] sport can create hope where once there was only despair”. More than a decade after his death, Mandela’s words still teach us to recognize sport not merely as a game, but as a powerful force capable of inspiring change, restoring hope, and bringing people together. This is what this championship run has done to New York City. The five boroughs united as one around the orange and blue colours of the Knicks. White collar, blue collar, black, white, Hispanic—every New Yorker from Queens to the Upper East Side all cheered and hugged each other. Their differences dissolved; all that mattered was that their basketball team had just won. They rallied around the knicks flag.

“Sport has the power to change the world, [and] sport can create hope where once there was only despair” – Nelson Mandela

On June 18th, a parade celebrating the Knicks’ victory was held in Manhattan. Over 3 million people attended, approximately 1/4th of the population of New York. Those numbers alone speak to the meaning of this victory for New Yorkers. This is a city where the mayor is Muslim, the bagels are Jewish, the pope guides the catholic churches, and where the Knicks won in five and united the city. Before this championship run, New York was fractured, as was much of the USA. The city that had promised so much opportunity was slowly losing its glamour, as costs were too high, and the gap between rich and poor widened. As a result, the people of New York were desperate for change and thus elected a democratic socialist to become the mayor of the biggest financial capital in the world. The decision remains controversial. Yet his election, coupled with the Knicks championship run, might have knitted the city closer together. Zohran Mamdani could hardly have anticipated that the Knicks would unite New York the way they did. His smile at the ceremony says it all.

Watching the celebration through the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island filled me with an acute sense of longing. But now that I have come to think of it, their enthusiasm and ecstasy have reached even me, across the pond. That is the power of sports, helping unite peoples across the globe. Now with the World Cup starting, one can see entire cities gather and watch each game, supporting their national team. That’s the beauty of sports: it manages to bond everyone. So let us hope that this World Cup can heal the divisions within nations across the world, just as the Knicks did for New York and the Springboks did for South Africa.