As the New York Knicks clinched Game Four of the Eastern Conference finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers last week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani tweeted: “@nycsanitation, I’d like to report a sweep.” This was not your typical politician trying to ride the coattails of the city’s representatives marching on. Earlier in the play-offs, Mamdani had been photographed sitting with a friend in the nosebleed seats at Madison Square Garden. The kind of distant perches only populated by true die-hards desperate to be in the building on a memorable night regardless of the quality of the view.It says much for the Knicks’ impact on the city that the New York Post, taking time out from daily convincing its readership Mamdani is some sort of cross between Stalin and Lenin, has run a succession of old-school tabloid front pages chronicling their progress to the NBA finals. “Knicker Bonkers!” described a comeback victory over the Cavaliers where they had trailed by 22 points with just eight minutes left to play. “KA-Broom!” heralded their sweep of the Philadelphia 76ers in an earlier round. “Party like it’s 1999” was the latest call to arms, harking back to the eve of the millennium, the last time the club made it this far. Twenty-seven years since reaching a decider. Fifty-three since lifting the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Generations have come of age never knowing what it’s like to even sniff a championship. Enormous gaps that may explain why New York has collectively lost its mind over the past month. Witness the mavens of sports talk radio forensically discussing conspiracy theories about how exactly Mitchell Robinson, the sixth man (first sub), might have broke his pinky.The city thrums to a very distinct beat when the Knicks are on a run like this. Winning 11 play-off games on the spin has everybody starting to believe the famine may be about to end. No, really. In a place where exaggeration is the default setting, hyperbole the lingua franca, streets and subways are suddenly a blur of blue and orange shirts, some classics excavated from the very bottoms of closets, mothballed relics of previous, failed tilts at glory.Thousands have been converging around Madison Square Garden during home games, impromptu sidewalk parties growing so raucous somebody recently wondered if the National Guard might need to be on hand for the visits of the San Antonio Spurs in the best of seven series that started last night. Maybe it’s because they play in the beating heart of midtown and that basketball remains the game of the asphalt playgrounds but there is a different vibe around here when the Knicks turn into legitimate contenders. Even the pot stores are offering free baggies if the team wins it all.Knicks fans celebrate outside Madison Square Garden in New York after their team advanced to the NBA finals. Photograph: Vincent Alban/The New York Times When the Giants are on the way to the Super Bowl, all the action takes place in New Jersey. Another planet. When the Yankees reach the World Series, the games are way up in the Bronx. The Knicks play above Penn Station, their gargantuan, circular arena a landmark on the skyline, a staple of popular culture, a fixture on so many people’s commutes. The current frenzy can also be traced to the fact these tormented fans have lived through some of the worst teams in franchise history, outfits so spectacularly mediocre supporters used to wear paper bags on their heads during games for fear of being seen on camera. “Knick nuts understand the true meaning of suffering,” wrote the late William Goldman, the screenwriter who famously skipped collecting his Oscar for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to watch his team, “despair is our companion.”Tina Fey, Timothée Chalamet, Kylie Jenner and Ben Stiller watch the New York Knicks play Atlanta Hawks at Madison Square Garden in April. Photograph: Sarah Stier/Getty Images As Jalen Brunson, an undersized shooting guard at 6ft 2in, has somehow morphed into the king of the city, averaging almost 27 points per playoff game, and coming up clutch when it matters most, the ghosts of teams past are sitting at courtside. Men who defined eras turned hoary cheerleaders. The mercurial Latrell Sprewell from the 1999 defeat to the Spurs; Stephon Marbury, the Coney Island teen phenom unfortunately already past it when he got his dream move to the Garden; and Patrick Ewing, perhaps the greatest Knick never to win a title. Ewing bulwarked the 1994 nearly men that lost a Game Seven to the Houston Rockets yet who remain especially adored by the fan base.[ ‘Up the Bohs’: New York mayor Zohran Mamdani backs League of Ireland club in video messageOpens in new window ]The current squad provokes deep admiration too because, in a sport where one or two megastars can be enough to deliver a championship, the Knicks are a squad whose whole is more than the sum of its parts. Even Brunson was never considered truly elite when he arrived from the Dallas Mavericks in 2022. Where so many before him shrunk and played smaller under the unforgiving klieg lights of Broadway, he has been magnified by the experience, growing into the role of team leader and offensive focal point.A feature of Brunson’s postgame rituals is a celebratory hug with Mariska Hargitay, star of Law & Order: SVU, one of the longest running television shows in the US. Hargitay is a fixture on celebrity row, the vaunted courtside seats reserved for actors and celebrities to sprinkle a little glitz and glamour on every Knicks game. Knicks fans watch a recent game on giant screens outside Madison Square Garden. Photograph: José A Alvarado jnr/The New York Times The movie stars will appreciate that the only thing standing between their team and the title now is the Spurs’ 7ft 5in Frenchman called Victor Wembanyama. Showcasing a panoply of skills never seen before in a big man, Wemby has been nicknamed “The Alien”. Because every Gotham story needs a villain.