The New York Knicks swept the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday night to earn their first berth to the NBA Finals since 1999. For long-suffering New York supporters eager to flaunt their fandom for the finals, securing a piece of Knicks merchandise is a completely new game.
This is the first time the Knicks are conference champions in the e-commerce era, and the biggest sports merchandise providers in the U.S. are eager to cash in. Fanatics, the official e-commerce partner of the NBA and other major leagues, began selling celebratory items featuring Knicks imagery online as soon as the team won Game 4 over the Cavaliers.
But for many New Yorkers, the convenience of ordering online couldn’t meet the immediate demand of sporting Knicks gear around the city the morning after the team’s most consequential victory in a generation.
J.P. Trang, a vintage moped salesman and Knicks fan from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, trekked all over Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday in search of a uniform with the name of his favorite player, Landry Shamet. The reserve guard’s electric Eastern Conference finals performance—shooting over 90% from 3-point range in the series against Cleveland—hastened Trang’s urgency to get some gear featuring Shamet’s No. 44.
