The Knicks lost Game 3 at home, and somehow the box score became the least interesting part of the night. By the time the sun came up, NYC timelines were stuffed with footage of grown adults swinging on each other over a basketball game — Spurs fans getting jumped, cops getting tested, and bystanders catching strays. For a fanbase that just spent a decade begging to matter again, this was not the look.
FreedomNews.TV street footage of post-game crowds and a heavy NYPD response outside a Manhattan building.
The lowlight reel kept rolling. A Spurs fan in the wrong place at the wrong time got his jersey ripped clean off him in the middle of a street mob, the kind of clip that doesn't age well no matter who ends up hoisting a trophy. This is the stuff opposing fanbases screenshot and save forever.
The shirtless guy in the middle of the brawl is the Spurs fan whose jersey was just torn off.
Enter Dave Portnoy, lifelong Knicks guy, who woke up to the carnage and basically had to disown his own people. He said it broke his heart, called the night a disgusting display on the court, in the crowd and in the streets, and floated the very real possibility that if the Knicks do win this thing, the lasting image of the run won't be a buzzer-beater — it'll be a tourist getting stomped on Seventh Ave.
Portnoy on camera, gutted by how Knicks fans behaved after the loss.
Then he pivoted to the joke that summed up the whole night. A subway clip started circulating of a guy in a Knicks jersey getting absolutely throttled by a bigger dude in a t-shirt, and Portnoy reframed it as the Wemby vs Brunson recap — Brunson being the Knicks fan in the jersey, Wemby being the hand around his throat. It's a bit, but it's a bit that lands because Game 3 actually did feel like that.
A subway altercation involving a Knicks jersey, repackaged as Portnoy's Wemby-on-Brunson highlight.
The defense from New Yorkers online has mostly been some version of "those weren't real New Yorkers," which Portnoy has openly refused to buy — they live here, they're wearing the jerseys, they're New Yorkers. The Knicks get another crack at it in Game 4, and the bar for the fanbase is now embarrassingly low: don't choke anybody on the 1 train. Knick in 5, hopefully without an indictment.