It’s a grand tradition that spans generations. But how will Knicks fans turn the Spurs’ lovable star into a villain?
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NEW YORK — It’s one of the lasting joys of Knicks fandom: Brash New Yorkers, starved of a championship since 1973, channel their collective ire toward a nemesis who dares stand in their way.
Chants laced with curses echo through Madison Square Garden. Clever taunts goad their target, daring a response. The team’s most prominent celebrity fan, filmmaker Spike Lee, hurls trash talk from his courtside seat. And all across the city, in sports bars and living rooms, Knicks fans turn one franchise’s hero into New York’s villain, from Reggie Miller and Michael Jordan in one generation to Trae Young and Tyrese Haliburton the next.
Now, with the Knicks riding an 11-game winning streak into their first NBA Finals in 27 years, a new foe enters the arena: Victor Wembanyama, the 7-foot-allegedly-4, 22-year-old Frenchman nicknamed “the Alien” because he can move his monumental frame in ways nobody has ever seen. He’s arguably the league’s best player already. And with the Finals tipping off this week, pitting the Knicks’ scrappy veterans against the San Antonio Spurs’ supernatural superstar, there’s no better candidate for Enemy Number One at Madison Square Garden.
There’s only one problem: New Yorkers love him.
“A great player,” one fan said this week, at a very Brooklyn Knicks bar. “The face of the NBA,” another said. “So astounding,” another said. Added: “I gotta like the guy.”
Of all the accomplishments Wembanyama has racked up in his young career, is there a greater feat than winning the affection of notoriously surly Knicks fans?
Also: How long can this last?
The archetypal Knicks villain was Miller, the Indiana Pacers sharpshooter who repeatedly foiled beloved Knicks teams in the ‘90s. He knew just how to antagonize, jawing with Lee throughout games, then delivering daggers laced with taunts, none more memorable than the time he put his hands around his neck to punctuate the Knicks choking away a game.
In those years, though, nobody instilled more terror in Knicks fans than Jordan, the ultimate supervillain, a cold and invincible force as inevitable as nature.
After promising runs in the ‘90s, the Knicks fell into a two-decade period of hardship, never getting hopes high enough for a villain to emerge. But when the Knicks finally returned to contention a few seasons ago, their fans dusted off the old tradition.
It wasn’t hard to find a target. The modern NBA is full of practiced showmen who, reared on social media highlights and the league’s young and diverse fan base, have elevated the art of three-point and dunk celebration with fresh creativity, even extending the realm of trash talk into podcasts and social media posts.
So one year, it was Young, the sharpshooting point guard then on the Atlanta Hawks, who relished his role, barking at the crowd, posing at center court, then taking a bow.
Another year, it was Joel Embiid, the Philadelphia 76ers big man who Knicks fans accused of playing dirty and complaining about the referees too much. Embiid met their hostility with a smile after a comeback win, telling the Daily News in a postgame interview that New York is his “favorite city in the world.”
“If I’ve got to be the punching bag and hear a lot of ‘F Embiid,’ that’s okay,” he said. “I love it.”
Last year, with the Knicks threatening a Finals run, it was Haliburton’s turn. The Pacers guard celebrated a heroic comeback by mimicking Miller’s choke gesture, then showed up to a news conference with a hoodie emblazoned with Miller’s iconic taunt.
After New York swept the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals this year, Knicks fans had their next villain in sight: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the back-to-back MVP guard of the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder. The Thunder had exasperated the basketball world with its penchant for flailing limbs to bait foul calls, and no practitioner had mastered the art of flopping more effectively than Gilgeous-Alexander. In the eyes of the league — or at least NBA Reddit — the Thunder threatened a dark age of cheap triumphs.
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Knicks fans swear they wanted Wembanyama, not the Thunder. But they also talk like they’ve been practicing their trash-talking in the mirror.
“The way Oklahoma City plays is so different from this New York mentality of hard-nosed basketball,” Tyler Ellis, a 43-year-old fan in a flat-brimmed Knicks hat and an orange and blue beaded necklace his son made, said at the bar.
Then he simplified it: “We don’t fall down on the floor.”
Yes, Gilgeous-Alexander, though quiet and Canadian, was built for MSG villainy. But instead:
Wembanyama, who trains with Shaolin monks in the offseason. Who wore a thobe to a recent playoff game to honor Eid. Who greets his achievements with sentimental soliloquies about his childhood dreams. Who even seems to like reporters: The Professional Basketball Writers Association awarded him with the Magic Johnson Award for his “cooperation and grace in dealing with the media and fans.”
“He’s not a villain,” said Sandy Mattingly, a 72-year-old born in Manhattan, sipping beers with another lifelong Knicks fan at the bar counter. “He can never be a villain.”
There is precedent for the Knicks enduring a high-stakes playoff series without a central antagonist. It happened to be the last time the Knicks were in the Finals, in 1999. And it happened to be against the Spurs.
“There weren’t any villains on that team,” said Andy Walker, a 71-year-old retired pro basketball player from Queens. “Those cats just played ball.”
They were led by David Robinson, a clean-cut Navy veteran, and Tim Duncan, a soft-spoken 7-footer who turned out to be one of the best players of his generation. In Duncan’s second season, and Robinson’s last, the Spurs easily beat the Knicks to win their first championship.
“We had to deal with Tim Duncan,” Mark Jean, a 40-year-old Knicks obsessive, said. “Now we gotta deal with Wemby.”
But a Monday at the bar is not Game 3 at MSG. There remains time, and Knicks fans’ high hopes, together with Wembanyama’s competitive fire, have created fertile ground for a villain to sprout. When Minnesota Timberwolves defenders hounded him in a recent playoff game, he threw an elbow that, in a Finals game, might have grazed Timothée Chalamet’s hair. He dives on the ground for loose balls and boldly declares that he deserves to win the sport’s highest awards. He talks trash and sometimes he cries. Knicks fans can work with this.
If Wembanyama decides to engage in banter, will he feel tempted to bring up the fact that days ago, just hours before he took the court in Oklahoma City for the deciding Game 7, his favorite soccer team, Paris Saint-Germain, defeated Lee’s favorite soccer team, Arsenal, to win Europe’s Champions League?
Lee had watched the Arsenal game at the Arsenal bar next door to his studio in Brooklyn, dressed in Knicks orange from cap to sneakers. Within minutes of Arsenal’s gutting penalty-kick loss, Lee sullenly made his way toward the exit, through the dejected crowd. He shook off the pain by looking ahead to a reason for hope: “Knicks! Knicks!” he said.
Knicks fans are riding high. Jean thinks the Knicks will win the best-of-seven series in five games. Ellis has heard some friends predict the Knicks keep their streak going and sweep the Spurs in four games, but Ellis himself expects a tighter margin, with the Knicks winning in six or seven. Will their magnanimity hold if they find themselves on the wrong end of Wembanyama’s coronation?
“He’s going to be the next great of the NBA, but we don’t want it to be this series,” Walker said. “He has to beat us to be a villain.”
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