Knicks Championship Parade Set for Thursday in NYC’s Canyon of Heroes, Their First Since 1973
The Knicks are getting their parade. The city has been waiting 53 years for it.
New York is set to host the championship parade on Thursday, June 18, starting at 10 a.m. near Battery Park. The procession will travel north up Broadway through the Canyon of Heroes and finish with a ceremony at City Hall. It is the same route every New York title team has taken, from the 1969 Mets to the 1986 Giants to the 2023 Yankees.
The Knicks have never been part of that tradition. Not even after their 1970 or 1973 titles. Ticker tape parades were not standard NBA championship treatment back then, and the city did not have the infrastructure built around them yet. This Thursday’s celebration will be the first ticker tape parade in franchise history.
That is the headline. Every Knicks fan you know has been waiting their entire adult life for this. Some have been waiting since their first Knicks game. Some never thought it would happen.
The team is going all in on the production. Reports say Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Josh Hart are all expected to ride floats up Broadway. Coach Tom Thibodeau and the entire coaching staff will be there. Owner James Dolan is expected to make remarks at City Hall. Spike Lee will probably be on something. It is going to be a scene.
For the city, this matters in a way that is hard to overstate. The Knicks are the only major New York franchise that has not delivered a title in this century. The Yankees, the Giants, the Mets, the Devils, the Rangers, and the Islanders have all had championship parades since 2000. The Knicks have been the great civic ache, the team everyone roots for and nobody can rely on.
That ended on Saturday night when New York closed out the Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the Finals. Brunson dropped 45 points to win Finals MVP. Anunoby blocked a shot in the final seconds. Towns hit the threes that mattered. The Knicks finished the series 4-1 and gave the franchise its third championship and first since the Walt Frazier and Willis Reed era.
The parade route is the Canyon of Heroes for a reason. The skyscrapers along Broadway from Battery Park to City Hall create an echo chamber, and the office workers above shower the procession with paper. The energy is unique to New York. Anyone who has been to one of these parades knows it is the kind of thing that bonds a fan base for a generation.
The MTA has already started planning crowd control. Lower Manhattan businesses are bracing for a complete shutdown of foot traffic. NYPD is expected to deploy thousands of officers along the route. Schools in the area are dismissing early to allow students to attend.
For Jalen Brunson, who grew up around the league because of his dad’s coaching career, this is the moment. Walking up Broadway as the Finals MVP, surrounded by the city he just delivered for, is the kind of memory that does not get topped.
Thursday at 10 a.m. The Canyon of Heroes. 53 years in the making. New York is finally getting the parade it has earned.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
