By BRIAN MAHONEY AP Basketball Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — The song selection at the New York Knicks’ watch party couldn’t have been more obvious.
Minutes after the Knicks finished their four-game sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals, the DJ at Radio City Music Hall played Prince’s “1999.”
That was the last time the Knicks had reached the NBA Finals. And as fans sang along to, “So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999,” they could forget the more than a quarter of a century of mostly bad years since and enjoy the record-setting run the current team is on.
“There is no precedent right now as far as point differential. That’s how good this Knicks team is,” said Ari Levine, who was carrying part of a broom as the Knicks swept their second straight series.
He’s right. The Knicks have outscored Atlanta, Philadelphia and Cleveland by a combined 262 points during their playoff winning streak, the largest margin in any 11-game span in NBA history.
They will try to continue it against Oklahoma City or San Antonio in the NBA Finals. Fans seemed to have a clear preference for Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs as they poured out of the famous Manhattan venue onto city streets, chanting “We want Wemby! We want Wemby!”
But whether it’s him or the defending champion Thunder, Knicks fans believe the run will continue.
“We’re taking everything! We’re taking the whole thing!” rapper Fat Joe posted on Instagram from the court in Cleveland, where he was one of the Knicks’ celebrity fans who made the trip.
It wasn’t that long ago when fans had no reason for such confidence. The Knicks went 17-65 in 2018-19, the worst record in the league, during a stretch when they had a losing record for seven straight seasons.
“That year we won 17 games I thought we had reached rock bottom,” longtime fan Anthony Mills said at the Radio City party. “I wasn’t sure that we could ever get this back again.”
He became a Knicks fan when Bernard King was playing for them in the mid-1980s, a decade removed from their second and most recent championship in 1973. The drought is now so long he believes if the Knicks end it this season, star guard Jalen Brunson would earn a spot among New York’s most fabled champions.
“If Jalen Brunson wins this championship, he should be Joe Namath. And if you’re old enough, you understand what Joe Namath means,” Mills said, referring to the iconic quarterback who guaranteed the New York Jets would beat the favored Baltimore Colts in the third Super Bowl in 1969, and then delivered.
Brunson’s team, like Namath’s, will be the underdog. But the Knicks sure aren’t playing like one.
“This team is hungry and they know what it would mean to this city,” Mills said. “They’re going to win the championship.”
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