New York has not thrown a basketball parade since Richard Nixon was in office. That ends Thursday. The Knicks closed out the Spurs 4-1 in San Antonio on Saturday night, Jalen Brunson dropped 45 in the clincher, and the city has spent the seventy-two hours since trying to remember how to do a championship celebration. The answer, City Hall confirmed Monday afternoon, is the way New York has always done one — a ticker-tape parade up the Canyon of Heroes, ending with the trophy raised on the steps of City Hall.
The basics: date, time, route
The parade is Thursday, June 18. Floats roll out from Battery Park at 11 a.m. Eastern, head north up Broadway through the stretch of Lower Manhattan officially designated the Canyon of Heroes, and finish at City Hall around 1 p.m. for the trophy presentation and a short ceremony with the players, the coaching staff, the ownership group and Mayor Mamdani. The route is roughly 1.3 miles long, the same path used for every New York championship parade since the Mets in 1969.
Cross streets along Broadway will be closed from sunrise. Subway stations at Bowling Green, Wall Street, Fulton Street and City Hall will be open but extremely congested by 9 a.m. The MTA is running extended morning service on the 4, 5, R and W lines. If you are coming in from anywhere outside Manhattan, the standing advice from NYPD is the same it has been for every parade in the past half-century: come in well before 10 a.m. or don't bother coming at all.
Why this one matters
The Knicks last won the NBA championship in 1973. They did not throw a parade then. The franchise has had two title runs in the half-century since — the Patrick Ewing teams of the 1990s, who reached two Finals and lost both, and the brief Carmelo Anthony window that never made it past the second round. A generation of fans was raised on the idea that the Knicks were a team that almost won. Some of them are going to cry on Thursday. Most will pretend they aren't.
The basketball case is also extraordinary. Brunson averaged 32.4 points across the Finals, won the Bill Russell Award unanimously, and joined a list of Finals MVPs (Magic, Shaq, LeBron, Curry, Duncan) that does not have many small guards on it. Karl-Anthony Towns played the best playoff basketball of his career. OG Anunoby's tip-in to steal Game 4 will be replayed at the Garden every opening night for the next decade. The roster is built to come back, which is part of what makes Thursday feel less like a farewell to a moment and more like a christening of a window.
How to watch if you are not in the city
National coverage starts at 10:30 a.m. ET. ABC News has the broadcast, with simulcasts on YES Network and MSG. NBA TV picks up coverage from 11 a.m. through the City Hall ceremony. The NBA app will run a clean stream without commentary for fans who want to watch the floats without listening to a panel.
Social streams will be everywhere. The Knicks' official channels will have a multi-camera setup running on YouTube, including a dedicated camera fixed on the lead float carrying Brunson, the Larry O'Brien trophy and head coach Tom Thibodeau. The franchise has also confirmed that every player on the active roster will be present, including the injured Mitchell Robinson.
What to actually expect on the route
- Ticker tape. Real, paper, thrown from office windows above Broadway. The Department of Sanitation estimates 35 tons of confetti on the route by mid-afternoon.
- Brunson on the lead float. Confirmed. He'll have the trophy. Towns is on the second float, Anunoby and McBride on the third, the rest of the roster on the fourth.
- A long stop at Liberty Street. The widest section of the route — biggest crowd, biggest visual moment, every parade gets a deliberate five-minute pause here for cameras.
- Two musical acts. Mayor's office confirmed performers at the City Hall ceremony but has not released names.
- Speeches from Brunson and Thibodeau. Short — historically these come in under ten minutes total.
What it costs the city
Roughly four million dollars in NYPD overtime, sanitation, MTA coordination and route construction. The Knicks' ownership group is covering a portion. Most of New York's championship parades have paid for themselves in tourism and downtown revenue within a week, and the city is bracing for the largest crowd a basketball parade has ever drawn here — early estimates from the office of emergency management are over two million people along the route.
What's next for the Knicks
The draft is next Wednesday. Free agency opens June 30. The Knicks do not have a first-round pick — that one went out in the Anunoby trade — but they do have full Bird rights on Brunson and Anunoby and have already signalled extensions are next. Coach Thibodeau is under contract through 2028. The repeater tax pressure starts biting in 2027, which means this window is more like two strong seasons than five, but for the next forty-eight hours nobody in New York is allowed to think about luxury thresholds.
FAQ
Where does the Knicks parade start and end? Battery Park to City Hall, up Broadway. About 1.3 miles. Starts 11 a.m., wraps around 1 p.m.
Is the parade free? Yes. Public, open to anyone, no tickets. The City Hall ceremony at the end is invite-only but the parade route itself is open.
Will Jalen Brunson speak at City Hall? Yes — he and Tom Thibodeau will both have short remarks. Karl-Anthony Towns is also expected to speak.
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