I’m about to type a sentence that I never thought I would ever say:
“I will be rooting against the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals.”
If anyone had suggested to me that I would ever write those words in my 60+ years of being a basketball fan, I would have laughed them out of the room.
I was born and raised on New York sports. Both my parents and grandparents lived in the NYC area, and probably generations before them. My dad would tell me stories from when he was a kid of hopping on the bus over the bridge, and then taking the subway to Yankee Stadium, where he saw Babe Ruth play many times. He took me to many Yankee games as a kid, which cemented my loyalty to the Yankees. And we watched many Knicks games together as well.
I started following basketball, not just watching it with my dad, when I was around 10 years old. I was 12 when they won their first championship, with Willis Reed making his famous return from injury in Game 7 against the Lakers. Three years later they won their second, and last, championship. I was a Knicks fan for life.
Throughout most of the 70s and 80s the Knicks were pretty terrible – they had a few glimmers, but never got very far. In the early 90s the team looked much stronger with the team built around Patrick Ewing, but of course that was also the era of the Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan. During Jordan’s brief retirement, the Knicks finally made it back to the finals, only to lose to the Houston Rockets. They remained competitive, but never reached the Finals again until 1999, where they lost to the San Antonio Spurs.
27 years would pass until they made it back to the Finals. A lot changed in the world in those years, and a lot changed for me: in 2008 I moved to San Antonio.
Supporting the Spurs is part of San Antonio’s culture. At first I still considered myself a New Yorker rooting for the local team. But over time, watching Tim Duncan, Manu Ginóbili, Tony Parker, and Gregg Popovich, I found myself becoming genuinely invested. Somewhere along the way, I stopped being a Knicks fan who liked the Spurs and became a fan of both teams.
For years this was fine; I could root for both teams, as they rarely played each other in a significant game. That changed this past year, when the NBA’s new in-season tournament, the NBA Cup, had the Spurs facing the Knicks in the finals. I thought that this would be a dream outcome – “my” team wins no matter what! But as I watched the game, I found myself excited when the Spurs scored, and getting a little nervous when the Knicks went on a run. I realized that I was a Spurs fan first, and a Knicks fan second. The Knicks ended up winning, and it brought me no joy.
Which brings me to the title of this post: loyalties. Sports are known for the particularly strong and fervent loyalty of fans for their teams. Most fans bases are local, and I was no exception.
I’ve been a loyal Knicks fan for over 50 years, and I still support them. But my loyalty has shifted to my new home town team: the San Antonio Spurs.
Spurs in 6!