{"id":823378,"date":"2026-08-29T12:24:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T12:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/823378\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T12:24:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T12:24:32","slug":"new-york-celebrated-the-knicks-without-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/823378\/","title":{"rendered":"New York celebrated the Knicks without politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Knicks won a championship, and for a few weeks New York seemed weirdly uninterested in politics. One invitation to the White House later, and politics has started to creep right back into the conversation.<\/p>\n

The Knicks employ people from different countries, religions, races, backgrounds, and political beliefs. Some of them probably love the idea of visiting the White House. Some probably hate it. Some probably haven\u2019t thought about it for more than 30 seconds, and honestly, that\u2019s probably the healthiest mindset of all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among all those people, the miracle isn\u2019t that they agree. It\u2019s that they can work together without having to.<\/p>\n

In a city that increasingly sorts itself into smaller and smaller tribes, the Knicks spent the better part of a year winning everyone over, all while being completely apolitical.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They stayed out of drama, took pay cuts for each other, respected the organization and the league, and played with a professionalism that felt increasingly rare. You had rich people getting along with poor people \u2014 for NBA standards.<\/p>\n

There were Trump lovers mingling with Mamdani bros. You had nerds mixing with guys who would shadow box you in the lunchroom.\u00a0And they did it under one roof, one banner.<\/p>\n

Even a big name like Karl-Anthony Towns had to learn that arguing every whistle wasn\u2019t going to fly. That\u2019s the power of a culture: It\u2019s bigger than any individual personality. Players knew their role on the court and off it. The message was simple: Do your job.<\/p>\n

At the parade, the Knicks stood beside Zohran Mamdani, smiled for photographs and accepted championship rings. A democratic socialist mayor celebrated a billionaire-owned team whose athletes will collectively earn hundreds of millions of dollars this season, while thousands of fans cheered after paying hard-earned money, burning vacation days and standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the heat for hours to watch the team pass on a float.<\/p>\n

For a few minutes, nobody seemed especially concerned about ideological consistency. Even if Mamdani listed bench players from the 2000s when he couldn\u2019t name a current starter during his campaign, the city was able to collectively look past it. And everyone survived the experience! They participated in a civic ritual. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

Sports usually understands this distinction better than politics. That\u2019s why I found it so disappointing when Victor Wembanyama refused to shake hands with the Knicks. The Spurs built a dynasty on the idea that professionalism matters: you compete like hell, then you acknowledge the result.<\/p>\n

Derek Jeter understood that in his early twenties. So did Tim Duncan. The Knicks got Wemby\u2019s number this year. It happens. Shake their hands and get ready for the rematch.<\/p>\n

The moment felt especially strange because the Spurs spent decades teaching the opposite lesson. As an almost 20-year teaching veteran, when people ask who my favorite teacher is, I always say Gregg Popovich.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The long-time Spurs coach built an entire culture around respecting opponents, respecting the game and understanding that competition only works if both sides agree to certain rules. You can try to rip somebody\u2019s heart out for forty-eight minutes, but then you shake hands.<\/p>\n

The handshake wasn\u2019t saying \u201cI agree with you.\u201d It was saying \u201cI acknowledge you.\u201d And that\u2019s the same distinction we seem to have lost in politics. Visiting the White House, standing beside a mayor, or participating in a civic ritual does not have to mean endorsing everything that person believes.<\/p>\n

One of the things I try to teach my students is that if you spend your entire life reacting to somebody, then that person still controls part of your life.<\/p>\n

If every decision is filtered through your opponent, if every event becomes about them, if even a basketball team visiting the White House becomes a referendum on that person, then they still occupy a remarkable amount of space in your head.<\/p>\n

At some point you have to reclaim that space. The Knicks just spent a month giving New Yorkers something else to think about. For a brief stretch, the city was consumed by basketball. People screamed themselves hoarse, hugged strangers, called old friends and remembered what collective joy felt like. We remembered what it was like to share something with people we disagree with.<\/p>\n

The miracle was never that we agreed. The miracle was that we didn\u2019t have to. It was a rare moment. Let\u2019s not be in such a hurry to give it back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Knicks won a championship, and for a few weeks New York seemed weirdly uninterested in politics. One…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":823379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3767],"tags":[7,98063,670,247,3803,7534,26565,6,671,191,93292,3559,66],"class_list":["post-823378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn-nets","tag-basketball","tag-bobby-friedman","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-nets","tag-brooklynnets","tag-editorial","tag-national-basketball-association-nba","tag-nba","tag-nets","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-no-paywall","tag-politics","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117178785364648087","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}