I’m a Brooklyn Nets fan.
I didn’t say I’m a proud Brooklyn Nets fan, but I’m a Nets fan nonetheless.
Granted, I haven’t exactly tuned in since the failed Kevin Durant/James Harden/Kyrie Irving experiment from a few years back. However, the Nets are in our diocese, so thus I support them.
All of that to say, I could not stop watching this recent New York Knicks championship journey. Maybe it was the historic feel of this playoff run. Maybe it was the fact that the Knicks had not won a championship in 53 years. Maybe it was because this was just a likable group of players.
Either way, the Knicks, who at one point won 13 straight postseason games, captivated the city and delivered a championship across the four major sports to New York for the first time since the New York Giants won the Super Bowl in 2012. All the love, of course, to the WNBA’s New York Liberty and their championship run in 2024.
What made this run so remarkable was how they consistently overcame seemingly insurmountable deficits. In all five games of the NBA Finals, the Knicks trailed by double digits, and not only did they win four (including a 29-point comeback in Game 4 dubbed the “Miracle at MSG”), but they also did so three times on the San Antonio Spurs’ home court. I can only think of one phrase: Are you kidding me?
“The Knicks gave us a lesson in skill, patience, faith, perseverance, and taking each moment as it comes,” said Sister Marie Mackey, CSJ, director of campus ministry at St. Joseph’s University Brooklyn, Clinton Hill, who blessed Madison Square Garden with holy water ahead of the memorable Game 4. “They united our city and gave us the opportunity to experience multiple emotions at the same time.”
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For Father Ralph Edel, parochial vicar for Holy Family, Flushing, and American Martyrs, Bayside, the Knicks making the Finals was realistic all along. He became a true fan when the Knicks reached the finals in 1999 — ironically losing to the Spurs 4-1.
“I’ve had the feeling all season that if you’re within 10 points and you get to the fourth quarter, Jalen Brunson’s going to try to bring you home,” said Father Edel, who will soon become pastor of St. Ephrem, Dyker Heights. “He has been as bankable and reliable as anybody in the game of basketball.”
In the biggest moments, Brunson, aka “Captain Clutch,” took center stage, yet the supporting cast of Karl Anthony-Towns, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, Jose Alvarado (from our Catholic Youth Organization and Christ the King H.S., Middle Village), and OG Anunoby, whose tip-in to seal Game 4 will live on as the iconic moment of the championship run, all contributed under the bright lights.
“They unlocked another level of basketball,” Father Edel said. “They became unbelievably unselfish. They became unbelievably cohesive. They were rooting for each other on a level that was palpable.
“It was a very fun brand of basketball.”
Father Jose Diaz, pastor of Mary’s Nativity-St. Ann, Flushing, enjoyed the Knicks’ most recent Finals run in 1999. He loves the game so much that he still plays basketball every Monday night during the parish’s open gym.
“I didn’t expect them to get to the championship; I’m not going to lie,” said Father Diaz, who attended the ticker-tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes on June 18. “I think this is the first time I’ve seen a run of this magnitude because it’s from a team that no one expected it would come from.
“It was the grit and grind of the New York City Knicks representing the grit and grind of New York City people. It doesn’t get better than that.”
There’s a connection to be drawn between the 2026 Knicks and our Catholic faith. In his homily the day after the finals victory, Father Diaz summed it up very well.
“This Knicks team is reflective of the human journey,” he said. “There are highs and lows in life, and you can’t let the lows be too low, and the highs be too high. Brunson showed us that it’s about perseverance and keeping focused on what the end goal is — not focusing on the moment or your brokenness or on sin, but really focusing on how good God is and how he’s called us by name. Something that we can see in the Knicks is that you never give up.”
Now that the dust has settled, the watch parties are over, and the ticker tape has been swept up, I guess there’s only one thing left for this Nets fan to say: Go New York, Go New York, Go!