The New York Knicks, Resilience, and the Road to a Better Future
Over the past few weeks, many of our Zoom calls and Slack threads have included a running theme: the NY Knicks.
Our New York members have been bringing the rest of the country along for the ride, sharing nervous excitement, superstitions, celebrations, heartbreak, and finally, joy. Even members who could not care less about basketball probably know by now that it has been 53 years since the Knicks last won a championship. And somehow, through screens and group chats and Zooms, that joy spread far beyond New York City itself.
For New Yorkers, though, it has felt especially emotional. You could feel it on the subway and hear it in restaurants and on street corners. Complete strangers high-fiving outside bars. People lingering after games just to be together in the glow of it all.
The Knicks gave this city joy. Not ironic joy. Not fleeting distraction. Real, collective joy.
And maybe part of why it felt so emotional is because New Yorkers know what it means to wait. Fifty-three years of heartbreak, rebuilding, disappointment, false starts, and seasons where hope felt misplaced. Championships are not built overnight. They are built slowly through setbacks, persistence, small victories, hard lessons, and the decision to keep showing up even when the outcome is uncertain.
Again and again during this playoff run, the Knicks found themselves down by 20 points or more. The commentators counted them out. The betting markets declared them finished. And yet somehow they kept showing up. Possession by possession, quarter by quarter, they stayed focused, kept believing, trusted one another, and fought their way back. And the fans stayed too! No one left. People believed even when the odds and honestly the scoreboard said not to.
That feels familiar to us.
Because the work of protecting democracy and building a more just country is also long work. Sometimes painfully long. There are losses that knock the wind out of us. There are days when the cruelty feels relentless and the progress invisible. There are moments when exhaustion and discouragement creep in and whisper: maybe this is too hard.
But history has never moved in a straight line and change never arrives all at once. The people who bent this country toward justice did so because they stayed in the fight long enough to see small victories become larger ones. They linked arms and they built community. They carried one another through the losses so they could eventually reach the wins.
That’s what this community does too.
And maybe that’s why the Knicks run resonated so deeply. Yes, it was basketball. But it was also a reminder of what belief, resilience, and collective effort can create over time. A reminder that joy itself can be unifying. New York has certainly come together before, after 9/11, after Hurricane Sandy, but usually in grief and crisis. What a gift it has been to watch this large and diverse city unite in celebration instead.
We need joy in movements like ours. Not because we are naïve about what we’re facing, but because joy is sustaining. Joy reminds us what we are fighting for: a country where people can live with dignity, safety, freedom, and hope.
In celebrating the Knicks, Mayor Mamdani spoke movingly about perseverance, loyalty, and the generations of New Yorkers who kept believing through decades of disappointment. His speech was ultimately about more than basketball. It was about what can happen when people stay committed to one another and to something bigger than themselves. We hope you’ll take a few minutes to watch it.
The road ahead will not be easy. We know that. But we also know this: when people come together around a common purpose, extraordinary things become possible.
We keep going.
Together.