NEW YORK — The New York Knicks won their first NBA championship in 53 years on Saturday night, and within minutes of the final buzzer, Knicks fans across the city began receiving what one described as “the bill,” a half-century of promises made on the assumption that this would never happen.
The Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals in San Antonio to close out the series 4-1. Jalen Brunson scored 45 points and was named Finals MVP, and New York rallied from a double-digit deficit in all four of its wins. It was the franchise’s third title and its first since 1973.
“If the Knicks ever win it all, I’ll eat my hat,” said Gerald Pasquale, 71, of Bayside, Queens, who first made the statement in 1979 and repeated it, by his count, about 4,000 times over the following 47 years. Pasquale was reached Sunday at his kitchen table, where a Knicks cap from 1994 had been cut into strips. “I said I’d eat my hat. I didn’t think I’d have to say which hat. I have 31 hats.”
The Reporter followed up on Pasquale’s statement and on several others. A man in Astoria who said in 2003 that “pigs will fly before the Knicks win a title” told the Reporter on Sunday that he had seen a pig flying over the Grand Central Parkway at about 11:15 p.m. Saturday, and the Reporter can confirm, after two hours on an overpass, that three more pigs crossed the parkway eastbound between 1 and 3 p.m. Sunday at an altitude of about 40 feet, in formation, and that none of them appeared surprised. A woman in Park Slope who had said for 22 years that she would “believe it when I see it” saw it, and has since believed everything, including a parking sign, a horoscope, and a man on the F train who said he was her cousin. A retired accountant in Yonkers who in 1986 had promised to “buy everyone in this bar a round” if the Knicks ever won spent Sunday trying to locate the 41 people who had been in the bar, which closed in 1991, and said he had called the team to ask whether there was a form.
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, said the Center has tracked Knicks-related promises since 1987 and estimates that 2.4 million of them came due with the final buzzer on Saturday. “They include 61,000 hats to be eaten, 212,000 tattoos, 8,400 promised name changes, and 1.1 million vows to ’never complain about anything again,’ which as of Sunday morning had a 0.00 percent compliance rate,” Teller said. “We have not been able to locate a single fan who has stopped complaining. Several are complaining about the hats. Further study is needed.”
The Reporter asked a dozen fans outside Madison Square Garden on Sunday whether the title had been worth the wait. Eleven said, “It was worth the wait.” Asked how they knew, all eleven said they had always known it would be. One of them had been quoted in this newspaper in 2014 saying the opposite, and when shown the clipping, said he had been quoted out of context, the context being 2014.
Pasquale said he expected to finish the hat by Thursday and had already been asked by his grandson what he would promise next. He said he was considering “if the Knicks ever win two in a row,” and that he had moved the remaining 30 hats to a high shelf, just in case.