The New York Knicks turned lower Manhattan into a parade route on Thursday, and the scale was hard to miss. An estimated 1 million fans filled the streets and sidewalks as the team rolled from Battery Park at 10 a.m. ET up Broadway through the Canyon of Heroes to City Hall.
The rush started early. By 7:30 a.m. ET, the New York Police Department said the sidewalk viewing pens along Broadway were full, and some fans who arrived hours before the parade were still shut out. That left people crowding other vantage points, including subway exits, fixtures and the sides of buildings, just to catch a glimpse of the orange celebration.
For Madison, the morning was worth a trade-off. The elementary student said she skipped her fifth-grade graduation to be there, one of many fans who treated the parade like a once-in-a-lifetime event rather than a weekday outing. Celebrity supporters including Spike Lee, Ben Stiller and Timothée Chalamet were there too, while Elmo held up a sign that read, “Elmo sorry.”
The celebration kept moving once the team reached City Hall. Zohran Mamdani welcomed the Knicks and handed out keys to New York City, while Rama Duwaji wore a dress made from upcycled Knicks T-shirts and Alicia Keys performed “Empire State of Mind.” Blue-and-orange confetti fell through the air as the crowd pressed in, a scene that fit the city’s old ticker-tape tradition and the plaques set into the ground along the route.
Wednesday had already set the tone for how long this orange run might last. Kathy Hochul and Spike Lee said the 34th St. subway station painted blue and orange for the Finals would stay that way through the next championship season, a signal that the celebration was meant to outlive the parade itself. The unanswered question now is not whether New York showed up, but how many more people could have been inside the pens if the city had opened more room before the route filled.
