The New York Knicks won Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals last night to stay alive against the Indiana Pacers. Knicks fans are feeling good, and if you roll your windows down, you might even be able to hear the “Knicks in 7” chants all the way from Manhattan.
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Knicks fans have certainly been all too eager to make a meme of themselves, whether it was for their crazy catchphrases like “Bing bong,” the feuds with opposing players that often blow up in their faces, or the fact that they renamed city streets after their players simply for advancing past Round 2.
They might want to sit down for this one, though, because on the latest episode of KG Certified, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce hit them with a low blow.
“Are the Knicks fans like the Cowboys fans?” KG asked. Pierce quickly responded by saying, “100%.”
Cowboys fans have been trolled relentlessly by Stephen A. Smith for years, to the point that making fun of them is old and tired by now. Knicks fans were the easy targets of the NBA. While they do share some similarities with Cowboys fans, such as hating their respective owners and believing that every year is their year, they aren’t quite as delusional just yet.
“I thought the Cowboys was an emotional fanbase, no,” Garnett said. “Man, when the Knicks got beat [in Games 1 and 2], and they showed the people coming out the Garden, man, you remember when Snoopy was going for Charlie Brown [and the sad music would play]?”
For one, the Knicks have been suffering much longer than the Cowboys. Dallas won three Super Bowls in the ’90s, while the Knicks haven’t won a ring since 1973. For context, Larry O’Brien, the NBA commissioner whom the championship trophy is named for, didn’t even take the job until two years after that, and the trophy wasn’t renamed until 1984.
Knicks fans should probably be insulted to be compared to Cowboys fans for the simple reason. For all their faults, Knicks fans are tried and true diehards. The Knicks have fans all around the country, but that’s more a product of so many New Yorkers leaving the Big Apple and relocating. When it comes to other sports, Knicks fans tend to stick with other New York teams.
The Cowboys are known as “America’s Team,” which by this point is more an insult than a compliment. The typical Cowboys fan doesn’t also like the Mavericks or the Rangers in baseball. The typical Cowboys fan also roots for the Lakers, the Yankees, Alabama football and Duke basketball.
Pierce called them “the most delusional fans,” but as a former Celtic, he’s admittedly very biased. Nobody gave the Knicks a shot in that series after they lost all four regular season games. After how little playoff success they’ve tasted (they hadn’t even been to the conference finals since 2000), they deserved to pop off a little.
The Cowboys have those rings from the ’90s to fall back on, but they’ve done next to nothing since. They’ve won four playoff games, total, in the last 25 years, and with the Eagles and Commanders both clearly ahead of them in the pecking order of the NFC East, that doesn’t look like it will be changing anytime soon.
Cowboys fans seem to love being the center of attention. They want to be noticed. KG referenced a video he saw from a Knicks fan after they beat Boston that made him understand what made Knicks fans different. “He held his camera up, and in the background it was going crazy,” KG recalled.
The fan said, “For everybody watching this, yeah, I know, we just beat the Celtics and we’re going to the Eastern Conference Finals. I know it’s not the Finals but this ain’t for you. This is for all of New York. This is for us, so f*** off world.”
That made it all sink in for KG. “When he said that, I was like you know what, I can honor that.”
Even being compared to Cowboys fans in the first place should be insulting for Knicks fans, but at least KG landed in the right place eventually. Knicks in 7? We’ll see.
