Spike Lee is already planning the celebration. Speaking from a car after the New York Knicks swept into the NBA Finals, the filmmaker said he had been “levitating for nearly a week” and was ready to throw a victory party in Fort Greene if the team finishes the job.
That response matters because the Knicks have not played for an NBA championship since 1999, and Lee has spent hundreds of nights courtside at Madison Square Garden as the team’s most passionate celebrity superfan. He was there in 1999 when New York lost to the San Antonio Spurs, and he was also courtside in the 1994 Finals when the Knicks fell to the Houston Rockets.
Lee said the current run has him feeling calm rather than rattled. “I'm not nervous. I'm not anxious,” he said. “Because this is our time.” He added that the last time the Knicks reached the title stage was the 1972-1973 team, and said he has been praying for them to win ever since. “We’ve been blessed by Pope Leo,” he said, tying the team’s surge to something larger than basketball.
That mix of certainty and devotion is part of what has long made Lee such a visible Knicks figure. He said his trash talk once backfired during the 1994 playoff loss to the Indiana Pacers, when he believed his courtside taunting of Reggie Miller played a part in that defeat, and he said he dialed it down after that. Now, with New York back in the Finals, he sounds less like someone hedging and more like someone preparing the playlist.
He also keeps folding in the Pope Leo story. Lee said he gave Pope Leo a Knicks jersey with Anthony Mason’s number 14, said Leo is the 14th pope named Leo, and said the pope signed a jersey for him. Lee said he wore the signed jersey once during the playoffs and will wear it throughout the Finals. “I don't know about demolition, but we will be victorious,” he said. If the Knicks do win, the only real mystery left is whether Fort Greene is about to host the loudest party in Lee’s long Knicks history.
