New York waited 53 years to throw this party, and on Thursday, June 18, 2026, it threw it the old-fashioned way. Confetti fell over Lower Manhattan as the New York Knicks, champions of the NBA, rode north on Broadway through the Canyon of Heroes. It was the first ticker-tape parade in the franchise’s history. The Knicks’ earlier titles, in 1970 and 1973, never got one.
Five games in June
The parade capped a Finals that ran short on games and long on nerve. New York beat the San Antonio Spurs four games to one. The Knicks took the first two, 105–95 and 105–104, dropped Game 3 by four points, then won Game 4 107–106 after trailing by 29, with Jalen Brunson scoring 36 and OG Anunoby 33. The NBA’s own game notes call it the largest comeback on record in Finals history.
Game 5 was played on Saturday, June 13, at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, and it belonged to Brunson. The Knicks captain scored 45 points, 15 of them in the fourth quarter, as New York rallied late to win 94–90. No Knick had ever scored that many in a Finals game. Brunson was named Finals MVP by a unanimous vote and received the Bill Russell Trophy. Across the series he averaged 32.6 points, 4.6 assists and 4.2 rebounds.
“It’s everything we dreamed of. It’s why I came to New York,” Brunson said on the trophy stage, standing beside his father, Rick, a Knicks assistant coach.
The numbers around the title were just as large. New York went 16–3 in the playoffs, set a single-postseason record for point differential and became the first team to win the Emirates NBA Cup and the championship in the same season. The 53 years between Knicks titles is the longest such gap in league history.
Up Broadway
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office set the plan: a 10 a.m. start near Bowling Green, a route north along Broadway, and a finish at City Hall, where the team received keys to the city. Watching from the route was free and needed no ticket. The City Hall ceremony did. The city gave away 600 tickets by lottery, and CBS News New York reported that 347,000 people applied.
Everything south of Canal Street closed to cars at 7 a.m. Viewing pens opened at 6 a.m., and the NYPD warned that access points would shut once the pens filled.
Head coach Mike Brown worked up the crowd before the floats moved. Rick Brunson held the Larry O’Brien Trophy aloft on the Brunson float while chants of “M-V-P” followed his son up the avenue. Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart and Mitchell Robinson made the ride as well. Bridges brought his dog, Hart stepped off his float to celebrate at street level, and Robinson skipped the floats for one of his pickup trucks.
The view from Barclay Street
Our photographs come from the crowd on the side streets west of Broadway, including the corner of Church and Barclay Streets at Old St. Peter’s Church, a block from the route. The city listed that corner as one of the parade’s access points, and it was also the entrance to the accessible viewing area on Broadway between Vesey and Barclay.
On the church grounds stands a memorial flagpole erected by Mary A. McGrath for her son, Thomas J. McGrath of the U.S. Coast Guard. Its plaque honors those who died in World War I and those then serving in World War II. On parade morning, fans stood on the church’s stone base behind its iron fence for a better sightline, and a boy held onto a crosswalk signal pole, just above a sea of blue and orange caps.
The street told the season’s story in clothing. A cream cap was stitched NEW YORK in orange thread. A blue one said NEW YORK FOREVER in white. A black-and-orange BRUNSON 11 jersey moved through the crowd under the flags on a one-way street, and in close-up its orange stripe carried a signature in black. For one morning, much of the crowd dressed like a single team.
Keys to the city
At City Hall the team took the stage for the key ceremony, and Brunson spoke for his teammates. He described a group that held together through its hardest stretches. “You saw the belief, the belief in each other,” he told the crowd. Alicia Keys, a New York native, then performed “Empire State of Mind” with the champions beside her.
Brunson joined the Knicks as a free agent in 2022. Four years later he is the Finals MVP of a champion that made a habit of coming from behind. NBA notes say New York went 6–2 in playoff games in which it trailed by 10 or more points. Every other team combined went 15–74 in that situation.
For a franchise that had last won when gasoline cost 39 cents a gallon, by NBA.com’s count, the wait is over. New York has its third championship, and at last it has the parade to go with it.