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There’s no denying that Knicks fans, who have stayed loyal through the franchise’s many ups and downs, go hard for their team.
As the Knicks approach Game 5 of the Finals, a sentence fans haven’t heard since 1999, the excitement and energy throughout New York City are at an all-time high.
Throughout this historic run, after each final buzzer sounds inside Madison Square Garden, within minutes, 7th Avenue dissolves into an overzealous mosh-pit of blue and orange — especially after a win.
Rowdy fans hang from traffic lights, shouts of “Bing Bong”— the surrogate anthem of Knicks fandom — are heard over the chatty crowds and somewhere in the madness, someone is documenting the lunacy of it all.
From that lunacy, an entire ecosystem of Knicks social media content creators has emerged in the last decade, transforming one of sports’ most notoriously tortured fan bases into an around-the-clock online community.
From Sidetalk’s viral street interviews to analytical film podcasts and vintage-apparel influencers, like Mr. Throwback, these creators have not only helped shape how New Yorkers experience their beloved team’s journey but have also helped define the culture surrounding them.
Sports fan Justin Morelli is the creator and voice behind The ShotClock, a beloved Instagram account with over 240,000 followers.
The Manhattanite’s videos, which easily rack up anywhere from 1.2 to 4.4 million views, feature his eccentric commentary overlaid on game clips.
“We’re the voice for the fans,” Morelli told The Post. “The fans start everything, they shape this, they’re the narrative we’re just trying to amplify them,” he said of his content.
“Social media fans just want to be a part of it,” said Morelli. “They just wanna celebrate anything; that’s why they’re celebrating everything like a playoff win; they’re going nuts in the streets.”
The Knicks making it this far in the Finals, one win away from holding a championship title, the first one since 1973, is the gift that keeps on giving for Morelli and his fellow sports content creators.
“I’m a huge Knicks fan, I’m just trying to be the voice for the ones that don’t do what I do,” the creator said. The fans start the whole thing.”
In 2019, when Trent Simonian, a 25-year-old Tisch School alum, conceptualized Sidetalk, a massive Instagram sports account with 1.9 million followers, dubbed “New York’s one-minute street show,” the intention was to “have a little fun” by conducting casual man-on-the-street-style interviews outside Madison Square Garden.
“We showed up one time when the Knicks were still in their horrible phase in 2021,” Simonian told The New York Times, recalling only 16 fans lingering around MSG wearing Knicks masks. “We were just like, ‘OK, the Knicks are starting to win a little bit. Let’s go talk to the fans, see what they have to say.’
When they made the playoffs that year, Simonian realized something big was brewing. “These Knicks fans are pretty passionate,” he told the outlet. “They struggled for a little while, and they’re really excited to break out of the shell.”
Simonian’s chaotic street reporting captured the enthusiasm, and well, the craziness of both Knicks fans and NYC street culture, something social media had never really seen before.
Seven years later, his account has close to 6,000 posts, racks up millions of views and has thousands of comments entertained by the madness of it all.
While it’s assumed that Simonian appreciates how enthusiastic fans can be, desperately wanting to appear in one of his videos, he’s extremely cautious about which fans make the cut, making sure the content feels authentic.
“There’s a lot of fans out here who now show up with the intention of going viral, and we’re very aware of that, and we don’t include that in the video,” he said in the Times interview.
While each creator has a similar goal in mind when creating their sports-centric content, they all come from different corners of sports fandom.
“We’re doing it from a Knicks perspective, but we try to be fair based on film study,” Andrew Claudio, host and producer of Knicks Film School, a podcast and social media platform that focuses on film study and breaking down the game from a technical and analytical level, told The Post.
“But it doesn’t stop us from reacting like fans when the Knicks have a run like this.”
Since initially launching on X (formerly Twitter) during the 2017 season, the podcast has grown to nearly 70,000 YouTube subscribers and counting.
“More people are catching on to us because the Knicks are justifying the hype. Fans should be going crazy,” Claudio told The Post.
“The way that they’re doing this is so historic and so uncanny for me personally,” Claudio said. “It defies all the fantasies of what Knicks fans thought a championship would look like. We thought we’d have to agonize the path,” he added.
“It’s a fairytale that this dedicated fan base gets to see this.”
It’s fair to say that not all sports content is created equally.
Mr. Throwback, a widely popular East Village shop with a penchant for vintage ’80s and ’90s fashion, first opened its doors in 2012.
Since then, owner and Knicks fanatic Mike Spitz has grown the brick-and-mortar into an online brand, with close to 200,000 Instagram followers, where he posts videos of hyped-up fans waiting in line to buy the perfect vintage sports fit.
“I’m selling out of custom merch every night, lines out the door,” Spitz told The Post. “I’ve been open 14 years, never had a line, but now people are showing up because they see the content and they want to wear something completely different.”
“We had a huge family come in yesterday; they had 6 kids. They bought everything,” the 44-year-old added.
“I think it’s great for the city, it’s bringing in so much new business, and people want to be a part of something that feels exciting,” he told The Post.
Spitz pointed out that each fan is introduced to the Knicks at a different stage in their life, which can be a point of contention for older fans who have struggled with the team’s rollercoaster journey to get to this point.
“But what is a real fan? Each person is different; we’re all in different times in our lives. It’s hard to debate who’s a ‘real fan’ unless you know the trivia…,” Spitz joked.
Casey Powell, the creator behind KnicksFanTV, an Instagram account started in 2017 that now has over 100,000 followers, digests every Knicks news post and fan reaction, and agrees that fandom is a generational thing.
“I go to games and see people who have witnessed the glory days of the 70s. I’m part of that Ewing generation,” the New York native said. “If the Knicks win the championship, it’s for everyone.”
When it comes to how content creators are documenting this iteration of fans or shaping it, Powell says it’s a collective energy. And that each content creator is offering something that resonates differently.
“Everybody is bringing their own stone to the party if you will,” he told The Post. “There is no other fanbase like the Knicks in terms of creativity and content. Some do short form, some do long form, some are incredible writers who cover the team.”
“There are so many avenues that people go down to find content, and it all feeds into this content universe that everyone’s benefiting,” Powell added.
The synergy between the creators and the fans doesn’t feel contrived when you’re experiencing the collective vibrations in real time — new fan or old. But the question of who drives the narrative remains elusive as the creators are both documenting the Knicks culture and simultaneously creating it.
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