Why the New York Knicks Offer an Escape from a Politicized World

When it comes to the length of my relationship with the New York Knicks, I’m more Taylor Swift than Timothée Chalamet.

But it was inevitable. For months, Knicks fever was slowly drawing me in. A close friend said the team was singularly healing her from a breakup. Another from depression. I had inadvertently been subjected to playoff games through friends, or the daily turmoil of them, through colleagues.

From the vantage point of Washington DC, where I oversee our politics coverage, we deal with the national guard at Sweetgreen and sports bars turned into Maga havens. So New York during this particular time in sports and cultural history has seemed like a downright Mamdani Mardi Gras, just a few hours out of reach.

As midterm primary season wears on, with emotionally taxing late-night election returns, and a White House that has us scrambling all day and most nights, I need the Knicks. Sports are politicized, as we all know, and the president turning up to watch the NBA finals at Madison Square Garden, or the World Cup referee barred from the US are proof. But they are not as political as, well, politics.

I deal with a nearly constant flow of news, often just steps away from their origin. There is no comfort in the rare moments of quiet – it almost certainly means something worse is coming.

Many people in America, including my friends and family, have tried to tune out from politics in the past couple of years. Other members of the media know this from peering under the hood at our audience. People engage wildly during the moments they feel they can’t ignore: an ICE takeover in Minnesota, the onset of a new war, or the Democratic party dealing with a Nazi tattoo. But otherwise, they’re looking for an escape and it comes in the form of many things: sports, shows, BookTok, watercolor classes, mahjong.

For me and my team at work, that’s not an option. (I have no one to blame – I chose this job and happen to love it.) But the brain was never built for this much information all at once, nor was our society built for this much disruption, and so my need for the occasional detour has become more urgent.

As someone with a 24/7 job and two young kids, the options are limited. There is the gym, required to survive. And then, in the past year and a half there has been: the World Cup, the Knicks, Off Campus, Heated Rivalry, March Madness, various tennis tournaments, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Emily in Paris, and an unhinged real estate novel.

With few hours of free time, choices are made carefully. When friends tell me about a new show I first have to check: is it sad? Is it serious? And if so, I immediately say no. I’m not looking for depth, or something that requires commitment. I’m looking for a quick and easy emotional high. Belly in Cousins. The Gators winning (and then losing). The look on Garrett’s face when Hannah does karaoke.

I’m not alone in this. Some of my most high-intensity friends oscillate between human rights and Conrad Fisher with ease. Group chats range from Epstein to Wemby. My husband, who spends his days treating sick kids and writing public policy, makes Kir Royals while we watch Emily refusing to leave Paris.

It’s become important not just as an emotional salve, but as a means of remaining alert to the world as it burns. I have always feared collective apathy, a hardening to suffering. But this light hedonism, this brief escape, it hasn’t numbed most people I know, and certainly not me.

Instead, watching the Knicks rise has provided a counterpoint - an optimism, a sense that thousands can be healed just for a second by an underdog, or a couple of gay hockey players, or the perfect book at the perfect time. It gives you a society that you want to fight to preserve, where so many people different from you can come together to enjoy just a brief moment in time.

In a world where the forces that divide are carefully manufactured by a few powerful people, the Knicks v Spurs in Game 5 takes on a whole new weight.