Basketball: For Her ✨

The story of how I tried to catch the Knicks fever, and maybe get a cool hat along the way

“You’re probably not going to like the kind of basketball fan I’m going to be,” I remarked to my husband, a few days after vowing to get into the sport.

After I showed him the first Knicks fanvideo set to Hamilton, he said, “you know what? I think you’re right, I’m not going to like this.”

@lfg_metsTHE RIGHT HAND MAN #knicks #nba #oganunoby #spurs #nbafinals

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But by then, it was too late. The fever was upon me.

Why basketball? Well, I read this essay about how Henrik Karlsson and his wife were very tired after they had 2 kids and she just wanted to garden but he thought it was boring. But he missed talking to his wife, so he made a big effort to figure out how gardening could be interesting to him. Happy ending: they both enjoyed talking about gardening.

It was relatable. My husband and I lead pretty separate lives besides parenting our kids — I’m at home, he’s at work, we’re exhausted and don’t even have time to even watch a movie together before collapsing to bed.

But then lately, even despite our three years of cumulative sleep debt, he had been staying up watching these basketball playoff games. Why? Why??? He said our NYC team, the Knicks, were doing rather well.

Our marital chitchat of late had mostly been about pediatrician iCal appointments and night wakings. Sad! Where’s the spark? But these Knicks… they had spark. I decided to take a page out of Henrik’s book and try to find a way to enjoy basketball on my own terms, so I could understand why my husband loved it so much.

There was one fact working against me: I’m from a family I would describe as “aggressively uninterested in sports.” In fact, so out of the loop am I, when I ran into another IU alum in the wild, I was like “hey, IU! I also went there!” And she was like “It’s been such a great time for IU!” And I was like “Is it? THEY’VE BEEN DEFUNDING THE HUMANITIES LIKE CRAZY!”

What, is that good? (Graphic credit to @nextroundlive instagram )

(My parents both worked at IU, and they didn’t ever mention the football wins to me either. As a general rule, our family dgaf about anything sports.)

Although I wasn’t a sports fan, it wasn’t my first time trying to take an interest my husband’s favorite game. In the past, I would sometimes try to watch the game broadcast with him, but inevitably my attention slid off within minutes, if not seconds.

If something exciting was happening with the little figures running around on the television screen, I could not tell. The medium sapped any magic away. After all, I’ve seen all kinds of great stuff on tv: dragons, explosions, Bob Odenkirk. The basketball game was just: Ball goes back and forth, guys run, who cares. Boring.

The first step to “getting it” was going to see the game in person. Now, I’ve seen some people complaining about bandwagoning Midwest transplants becoming fans of Knicks during their triumphant season, and I guess I’m one of them. I know, I know, not a real New Yorker, fake fan, etc.

But listen, actually: I just checked my camera roll, and we’ve gone to Knicks games in person at Madison Square Garden, starting in 2021. (Pro tip: you can get incredible seats for cheap if you lurk SeatGeek until 5 minutes after the game started). So actually, I’ve been hanging very loosely on the bandwagon for a few seasons. I have photos to prove it, as well as a commemorative Knicks™ Basketball-Shaped French Fry bowl that we use as a bath toy.

on February 4th, 2023, we used our last-minute-tickets technique to get amazing seats in the row right beside the court floor

Here’s the first thing that struck me about watching basketball in person, and you’re going to laugh because it’s really basic: The players were very, very tall. On tv, I can’t say that the sheer magnitude of their tallness came across. Each of them cut a Herculean figure, and each team also has an even taller guy who comes across as some kind of primordial Titan or something. (First basketball fact I remember learning is that guy is the center). Second thought: “How are these men possibly still running and jumping around after this long?” When you’re there in that stadium, breathing the same air as they thunder across the boards right in front of you, colliding brutally with each other and falling and smearing so much sweat across the floors that a little Sweat Towel Lackey has to scurry in and mop up — it’s intense.

Look, I’m girly. I really like live musicals. I’m always blown away by the triple-threat performers - they sing like angels, they dance like satyrs, they contort their faces like silent film stars, and it’s all live. No edits, no cuts, no redoes. The fact that they’re there on the Broadway stage means that they’re the best of the best of the best in a very competitive field.

And so it was with the basketball players. Even with my untrained eye, I recognized rare, fire-honed human excellence unfolding in front of me. A big man bursts past one, two, three other big men, vaults into the sky, slams the ball into the net. Triumph. The crowd explodes. I could get that. Exhilarating, even for me. But when it came to the details beyond the score, I didn’t really know what I was seeing. I knew ball went in basket, but why the fouls, why the timeouts, why did the crowd groan or cheer for certain non-goal moments? I was clueless.

So, fast forward to the finals. Everyone’s abuzz, my husband has never been so excited watching the games, I've had a taste of the fun but still don’t really know much about it. But I want so bad to let the power of the Knicks compel me! I want to feel it! As Cat Marnell noted in her recent dispatch from the NYC party zone: “I don’t blame band-wagoners: who the fuck wouldn’t want to be part of so much happiness and revelry?”

So, because my parenting schedule didn’t really allow me to join the parties, I began to study instead. I started to read David Halberstam’s The Breaks Of The Game (recommended as the best basketball writing of all time) in order to get an in-depth look at the different human and commercial forces at play in a basketball team and season, and then The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac by the FreeDarko blog collective so I could catch up on some of the mythology, the most famous faces, the important dynamics. I also kept up a rolling AI chat so I could ask such embarrassing questions as: “I Know It’s Good To Be Big And Fast, But What Other Specific Skills Do Basketball Stars Have?” and “What constitutes ‘The Paint’ and how exactly does one ‘go hard in it’”?

The FreeDarko Books are written really well, yes, but the illustrations are so cool that my 3 year old keeps demanding to read it. This is from The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac (link)

The other thing that helped me get up to date, of course, was the online media and the memes. And when I say memes, I mean the overwhelming firehose of Knicks content that began to spray me nonstop when the hair-trigger X algorithm detected a whiff of interest.

There was lots of fun stuff:

• Wemby slander

• hyperbolic promises to burn down the whole city if the Knicks win

• hyperbolic promises to burn down the whole city if the Knicks lose

• hype reels

• bootleg merch

• old embarrassing footage of the players in high school

My most guilty pleasure of my new media diet was the corner for X that I would classify as “Knicks: For Her.” I’m not talking about boring NBA merch that’s been through the “pink it and shrink it” cycle. I like the content that emerges from the beautiful women’s fandom hive mind, flavored with the same blissful obsession that animates us the K-Hive and Ariana Grande stans. Ya now, things I can get into as a woman who logged 9000 cumulative lifetime hours on Tumblr.

a softer, gentler, cuter basketball fandom… For Her ™. The Knicks marketing team even took a page out of Taylor Swift’s book and manufactured multiple instances of cozy knit cardigan merch. Pics via X, collage by me

Internet fandom provided an easy on-ramp to the juiciest elements of the narrative of the season. X memes are how I learned that OG Anunoby is the most deadpan man in the league with a penchant for scarves, that Josh and Jalen and Mikal have been friends and teammates since college, that Karl Anthony Towns has an irrepressibly expressive face, that Jose Alvarado is the pint-sized (for basketball) hometown hero, that Knicks’ secret weapon is The Power of Friendship. I also got to rewatch certain highlight clips over and over, algorithmically selected for maximum juice, and start to see what fans and social media accounts considered the most impressive moments of the game.

And then there was the in-person fervor: it’s so fun to join in when everyone on the street is discussing it, every bus driver is wearing a Knicks cap, when there’s finally a no-brainer conversation starter with the other playground parents that isn’t “so how old is she?”, when the whole city is holding their breath for the next game.

I was holding my breath too. I wanted vengeance for that nasty no-foul head-shove that Wemby did to our pookie Jalen Brunson. I was ambushing my husband with my iPhone and making him watch videos of OG Anunoby trolling his teammates. I was replyguying fanart posts on X.

The special Knicks subway entrance - photo taken moments before my 4th failed attempt to buy a hat (line at NBA store was too long, toddler was bored)

As a really good blog post by John Salvatier put it once, reality has a surprising amount of detail. And so does basketball. Let me compare it to something much more boring that I’m really good at: Knitting.

When I look at a piece of knit clothing in passing, because I know so much about knitting, I am have this BBC-Sherlock style overlay of details that I instantly perceive like: “ok 1x1 rib, hand knit plausible due to thick yarn gauge but the cast on edge gives away that it’s machine-knit, 2x2 cables, seed stitch panels, inspired by Guernsey sweaters but a toned down commercial version.”

So when I first started watching basketball, like I said, I was just like “they’re running with the ball.” But after my studies, I might see a little more of what’s going on. The feint that Brunson used to fake out Wemby and get past him, the way that the ball zips between the players but always finds its way back to the best shooter unless time has run out, and then whoever has it takes the shot, the things that do and do not upset the players (a little shove and posturing and staring? Whatever. Going for the knee or getting in the landing space? Very angry).

There’s still so much texture I don’t understand. But I’m starting to pick up little pieces. I’m starting to get more of a handle on the skills at play. And, maybe even more compellingly, I’m starting to see the underlying human drama. It no longer seems arbitrary and meaningless. How does Jalen Brunson do it when he’s so small? Are the Spurs, in their youth, perhaps a bit hubristic? Which players are overestimating themselves and making mistakes? Who loses their cool when the game is close and the stakes are high, and who is clutch?

I greeted playground parents in Knicks caps with banter about how the hell we were all going to survive staying up that late. I tried unsuccessfully to buy a Knicks hat over the course of a week, stymied at every turn by massive lines of people who had the exact same idea. I considered and discarded the idea of wearing the aforementioned Knicks Commemorative French Fry Bowl on my head, and ended up knitting a little spirit scarf and lacing my blue shoes with orange laces instead.

dorky!

Finally, it was time to watch game five with my husband. I resolved to stay up for the whole thing. I had gone to bed at halftime for game four, after googling “can the Knicks come back from a 27 point lead” and not liking the results. Reasonable choice as a parent, terrible choice as a beginner Knicks fan. Not again. To quote the bards of X, “My cream cheese was chive, my Knicks in five.”

The Spurs took the lead as usual, but we kept the faith. And oh Captain, my Captain - Jalen Brunson brought it back in the clutch, securing the championship and winning MVP.

NBA@NBA

Crossover. 'Tween. Drive. Fake. Step-through. Off glass. 2 points. Jalen Brunson (45 PTS, 15 in 4Q, 29 in 2H) and the New York Knicks capture their first NBA title since 1973 🏆

11:51 PM · Jun 14, 2026 · 4.06M Views

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My husband and I jumped around, yelling (quietly, not to wake the kids up) and celebrating. When the game was won and the stoic Jalen Brunson put the towel over his head, overcome with emotion at winning, and Hart came to clap him on the shoulder, I was overcome with emotion too. Josh and Jalen hugged, husband and I hugged, we went to bed buzzing with excitement and with no hope of a good night’s rest. The next day we were deliriously tired but thrilled.

I’m not going to pretend I’m Monica McNutt here. Just yesterday, I asked my husband: “Wait… what’s a rebound again?” But I had a lot of fun jumping on the Knicks bandwagon alongside him. And I’m looking forward to watching the new season — with eyes unclouded by anti-sports snobbery or ignorance — beside my husband.

In the end, I got what every bandwagoner wants: a chip, a lot of fun with my husband and my city, and a new appreciation for a beautiful game. And a hat. Did I mention I finally got my hat?

cropped my husband out of the selfie but Tyler Kolek got caught in the crossfire (crop-fire?). sorry Mr. Kolek, no slander intended