Culture
A$AP Rocky Has Contracted Knicks Fever, Just Like the Rest of New York
A report from the streets of NYC, where everyone from Rocky to Mayor Mamdani to MTA staffers are living for the orange and blue.
By Savannah Sobrevilla
June 8, 2026
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The Red Sea parted for Moses, but the swarm of bodies dressed in blue and orange outside Manny Janeth Cafe in NYC’s Lower East Side only barely opened a path for rapper A$AP Rocky and his entourage to sneak inside. Everyone, Rocky included, had come out to watch the Knicks play Game 2 of the NBA Finals this past Friday. While GQ’s social media editor and I strategized how we might also elbow through this mob of Knicks fans holding broomsticks, blunts, and beers in the middle of the street, a guy in a Realtree-patterned tank top and a pile of pearl necklaces caught our attention.
Holding a stack of clear plastic cups in his right hand and a handle of Tito’s in his left, he handed out cups of vodka to those gathered, attributing this act of partying generosity to A$AP Rocky. When we approached him, he grabbed the microphone, introduced himself as Thxto, and instructed us to turn our flash on. Then Thxto barrelled through a forest thick with sweat and smoke, shouting, “Let’s go Knicks!” After a few seconds of negotiation, he presented Flacko himself, who was wearing a white Prada polo, a mint cable-knit sweater over his shoulders, and a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers (in place of his slutty little reading glasses).
“I’m from New York, sweetheart. I ain’t no Knicks fan, I am a Knick,” Rocky said as he burst into cackles, vodka cup in hand—courtesy of Thxto, no doubt. “It’s fire. Look, everybody came outside, we’re having fun. I’m happy to be here. Shout out to the New York Knicks.”
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For a city that tries to play it cool at all times, New York is vibrating at a high frequency right now. Just after Game 1 of the NBA Playoffs, only two days prior, the fever blew away anything I’d seen in my near-decade of living in Manhattan. Conversations and outfits now seem to bend toward the Knicks from all angles. New Yorkers who otherwise have little in common suddenly find themselves sharing a common language. Never mind that most couldn’t have named the Knicks starting five just a couple weeks ago (and maybe still can’t). They were all riding the wave of 11 straight wins — now 12, after Friday’s — from a team that no one expected to be here.
Ground zero unsurprisingly has been Madison Square Garden, which hosted watch parties for Games 1 and 2 of the Finals, both played in San Antonio. Tickets for the watch parties sold out within the hour, so New Yorkers took to the streets. On Wednesday, there seemed to be as many people outside the Garden as inside. Passersby lined up to snap a photo with Niko Knickerbocker, an unofficial mascot of the Knicks dressed up in a blue suit, orange-knee high socks, and a giant foam head with a dead-eyed grin and a pageboy cap.
When asked for an interview, Mr. Knickerbocker told me through his foam head, and in a decadently thick New York accent, that he’s unable to provide quotes, only gestures. Girls walked by in I ❤︎ NY shirts, except the heart had been replaced by a photo of Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson. A pair of young men decked out in carrot orange told me that Spike Lee and Timothée Chalamet are their favorite Knicks fans.
“When he had that bomber jacket, I liked that a lot,” one of them said of Chalamet’s courtside style.
“I feel like nobody looks good in Knicks colors besides the players and Timothée Chalamet,” his friend agreed.
They weren't wrong: the Knicks’ iconic clashy hues of orange and royal blue aren't easy to pull off outside of the prospect of a Knicks championship. Some of it is the city’s natural colorway: MTA employees wear orange mesh vests over their blue uniforms, and seats on the subway are either weathered and orange or freshly varnished and blue.
In fact, everywhere I turn lately I see blue and orange, like a SantaCon that doesn’t suck. And everyone’s in on the fun — including Manhattan’s iconic skyscrapers, which are presently lit up in these colors. Every game day is Black Friday for every sports bar in the city. Gay bars and clubs like Nowadays (in Bushwick) and Ginger’s Bar (in Park Slope) are hosting watch parties. When I've asked people—of which I’ve asked dozens—if they’re a fan of the Knicks, they've answered, matter-of-factly and slightly offended, “yes,” as though I’ve asked if they like sex or money. As if it’s a stupid question to ask in New York City right now.
Earlier last Friday morning, my doctor gave me a version of “how ‘bout them Knicks.” My exterminator told me he feels “nostalgic,” as though we are living in a modern version of Spike Lee’s New York. You can tell the hype has broken containment because multiple congressional campaigns have absorbed Knicks colors into their marketing — a sop to the one thing everyone in this town can agree on.
Except, this being New York, there are contrarians. At Tír na Nóg, an Irish pub facing the Garden, Daniel Reden bravely admits he’s anti-Knicks.
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“I don't like to be caught up in groupthink,” says the born-and-bred New Yorker during halftime of Game 1. “I think that being a Knicks fan is sort of like being part of a religion. It's something that's given to you instead of something that comes from yourself.” He also finds the Spurs’ narrative compelling.
“I think that they have a very beautiful arc and story, a lot of young players—particularly Wembanyama,” he says. “I like the mentality. I like the meditation. I like the reach for self-actualization: know thyself.”
Additionally, he notes, a Knicks win would mean “pandemonium, more traffic, riots.”
It was nearly impossible for this Mercedes to unlatch from the crowd once the game wrapped.Savannah Sobrevilla
On the subway platform two days later, just as Game 2 kicked off, I ran into a New Yorker who “hates” the Knicks. When asked if he’s a fan of Wemby, he remarked, rather snarkily, that he’s more anti-Knicks than he is pro-Spurs.
“I like to troll my family,” he said. “It’s a long story.”
While I spoke to the Spurs fan on the platform, a train punk in a leather vest covered in buttons (one of them, simply emblazoned “sex militant”) screamed, “Let’s go Knicks! And if you don’t like that, go back to Texas!” It must be lonely to be anti-Knicks in New York City right now.
Back at Manny Janeth Cafe for Game 2, a horde of roughly 300 people crowded around a screen the size of the average living room Samsung, save the people who were jumping on cars. (RIP to one BMW’s windshield.) They all spent the night screaming “Knicks in four” while decked out in their best Knicks merch.
I asked a young Knicks fan and native New Yorker named Julian about a phenomenon I’d been finding difficult to reconcile: New York City is the most populous city in the country. It’s home to Wall St. and splashy IPOs, fashion weeks and the Met Gala. It is maybe the world’s most “famous” city, if that’s a thing. And yet the Knicks feel like underdogs. Why?
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“I'm 26 years old,” he says. “Twenty-seven years ago, the Knicks were last in the Finals. I've seen a shit-ton of terrible teams in my lifetime. So, it's great to tell you that there's this team that's come together as one. I've waited my whole life to see this.”
On the same night, around the same time Mayor Mamdani was dapping up strangers while hanging out the window of his own SUV, Spike Lee was being paraded around Brooklyn in a white Escalade—as though, one of my Instagram mutuals noted, “he’s the Pope.” He’s certainly the city’s patron saint right now; a talisman and spiritual defender of a certain New York ideal.
Tonight, for the first time in this year’s Finals, the game will be played in NYC. The Knicks’ gravitational pull will extend beyond celebrities, superfans, and neighborhood watch parties as another famous New York native, President Donald Trump, is slated to attend Game 3 at Madison Square Garden. Whether he gets the white Escalade treatment remains to be seen.