I remember exactly when my daughter became a diehard New York Knicks fan. I had long dreamed about it happening but had accepted it might never occur, in the way that parents often must resign themselves when it comes to their children’s passions and proclivities.
It was last May and the Knicks were facing the heavily favored Boston Celtics in the first game of their playoff series. The Knicks had fallen behind by 20 points early in the second half. By the end of the third quarter and into the fourth, though, the resilient Knicks started clawing their way back into the game.
That night, I was actually attending a Yankees game in the Bronx with some friends, but Amanda–who at 12 was aware of the Knicks since I was a big fan, but not particularly invested in the team–had started casually watching the game at her mother’s place. “You watching this game, bruh?” she texted me as the Knicks’ comeback gathered steam.
I began checking the scores on my phone and soon realized I had a strong enough cell signal to watch the actual game. Amanda and I began furiously texting with each successive play that narrowed the deficit: “Did you SEE that shot, Dad?” and “Holy crap, they just hit another three!!!” and “I can’t believe we might actually WIN this game!!” At one point when the Knicks had tied the score and the Celtics took a time out, Amanda called me, breathless, and we went over all the big plays, marveling at what we were witnessing.
I eventually started ignoring the baseball game I was attending to focus on the Knicks contest, which ended with one of the Knicks making a huge steal from the Celtics biggest star to seal the win. Amanda and I could barely contain ourselves, ecstatic over the outcome.
Incredibly, two nights later, when Amanda and I watched the next game together, almost the exact same scenario occurred—the Knicks again fell into an early 20-point hole, before slowly scratching their way back into the game. And once again, that same Knicks player who made the clinching play in the first game did the SAME EXACT THING to claim victory at the end of the second game.
All the while, Amanda and I were losing our minds, high-fiving each other and jumping up and down with each new charge by the Knicks and missed shot by the hated Celtics. Our hometown team would eventually win the whole series, four games to two, in a massive upset. The Knicks continued to step up and deliver, and the Celtics’ biggest star unfortunately suffered a season-ending injury midway through the series.
Those games, and especially those wildly dramatic two victories at the start, were when I knew Amanda had gotten hooked on the Knicks, opening up a whole new exhilarating chapter in our relationship.
Building the relationship I wanted
My own father, who emigrated to the U.S. with my mother from Hong Kong in the 1960’s, took me and my older brother to a handful of Yankees games back in the 1970’s, with the idea of exposing us to this quintessentially American pastime. But he was a distant figure, raised in a different time and culture and, as I would later learn, scarred by his own unhappy childhood. He spent little time explaining the game or what was going on. So while attending those games—and the Yankees’ dominance in those formative years—helped engender a lifelong love of the team, I didn’t associate them at all with my father and our relationship.
At my daughter’s birth, I vowed things would be different, and not just with respect to sports.
From an early age, I made sure to encourage her and validate her feelings, and our similar personalities—perceptive and highly sensitive to others’ feelings, but also anxious at times and imaginatively inclined—connected us even further. As she grew up, we bonded over creative activities like cooking, especially baking, and making up our own lyrics to popular songs.
When Amanda was about six, her mother and I split up, with each of us taking 50-50 custody and alternating time with her every two to three days. This heightened my desire to maintain a close relationship with Amanda and make sure she felt seen and supported.
For a time, I took her with me to a basketball clinic for adults I attended every Sunday, after which we’d practice dribbling in the hallway. I still have a video of her successfully executing several crossover dribbles and then proudly proclaiming that “I’m probably the first kid that’s ever done that!” When I hesitated to agree with her, she emphatically qualified that she meant a kid “my age!”
But Amanda’s interest in playing eventually waned, and my dreams of coaching her into a future basketball star receded. I understood that such things couldn’t be forced, but I at least hoped to bond over watching basketball and rooting for the hometown Knicks.
As a self-conscious and sometimes timid child of immigrants, I recognized from an early age the power of sports fandom to connect with others. Cheering for the Knicks and Yankees established an instant bond that made me feel safer around new people, no matter their backgrounds. Not surprisingly, I later formed several close friendships in my 20’s and 30’s because of a shared love for the Yankees and Knicks and watching games together.
Indeed, social scientists have long known that when people experience emotions as a group, those feelings tend to be more intense and long-lasting. And few shared experiences can match the emotional ups and downs of cheering for a pro sports team, with joy and hope alternating with dread and heartbreak, sometimes within the space of seconds. Moreover, a significant amount of other research shows that fathers often connect with their children through stimulating, emotionally charged forms of play, and that these interactions can strengthen emotional regulation and trust.
I envisioned sharing wonderful moments with Amanda, cheering on the New York teams, but the Knicks performed woefully in her early years, having become a bit of a laughingstock as their management made one terrible draft pick and trade after another. At one point I resorted to taking her to a few Brooklyn Nets games, whose tickets were much more affordable, and whose team was much more talented at the time.
But the Knicks still had a stranglehold on most New Yorkers’ hearts, including mine, owing to their long and storied history, and that was made abundantly clear as the team finally started to become more competitive around the time of the pandemic. The previously meddling owner took a new hands-off approach, and a fresh front office deftly acquired several talented new players. I gradually began watching more games on television, with Amanda sometimes sitting beside me and getting to know some of the players, including those on the despised Celtics.
And then came that fateful playoff series against Boston last year.
In that second game we watched together, Amanda and I developed what became a signature routine. One of the Knicks, Karl Anthony Towns, nicknamed KAT owing to his initials, scored a particularly impressive basket, prompting me and Amanda to make cat-like clawing gestures with our hands. This led to us developing special gestures for the other players, too.
- After three-point baskets by the Knicks’ stoic leader, Jalen Brunson, we imitated his signature kissing of three fingers on each hand and raising those hands to the sky, adding a shout of his initials, “JB!”
- To fast break baskets and hustle plays by Josh Hart, the team’s engine, we thumped a fist to our respective hearts.
- Swishes by the smooth-shooting small forward, Mikal Bridges, became a fluttering of one’s fingers over the other’s and a shout of “building Bridges!”
Coming up with one for the Knicks’ tall and athletic forward, OG Anunoby, proved a bit more challenging, but we found our solution while watching the TV broadcast for one of the home playoff games against the Celtics. After an emphatic dunk by Anunoby, the camera panned to the cheering crowd and eventually zoomed in on former Knicks great (and ex-New Jersey Senator) Bill Bradley, who put his hands together in a large “O” shape above his head. Amanda and I instantly knew we had found our celebratory sign for OG.
Every time a new player joined the team, we came up with a new gesture, testing it out for effectiveness and ease of execution, and refining as needed. Rooting strongly for the same team allowed us to come up with our own language.
Lessons beyond basketball
Bonding with Amanda over the Knicks helped me see and appreciate some of her talents more clearly. I always knew she was a quick study, but her ability to grasp some of the nuances of basketball strategy surprised even me at times.
“If the other team keeps fouling Mitch Robinson”—referrring to the Knicks’ center, whose terrible free throw shooting sometimes prompted opponents to foul him intentionally—“why don’t the Knicks just take him out of the game?” Amanda once asked me. “Well, that’s exactly the calculation the Knicks have to make,” I explained to her. “Is it worth it to keep Mitch in for his incredible defense and rebounding, or do you sit him because of his offensive liabilities? The answer varies depending on the situation.” She quickly nodded in understanding.
Another time, she asked me why it was so much easier to get rebounds when a team was on defense, as opposed to offense, which I told her had to do with the positioning of players on the court. Knowing she was able to grasp these ideas made me realize I could explain some very high-level concepts to her and quickly level up her understanding of the game.
The next round of the playoffs, this time against the Indiana Pacers, who had eliminated the Knicks the previous year, presented yet another opportunity to ratchet up our shared fandom. Dave, a good friend of mine who had also successfully converted his young daughter into a Knicks fan, happened to mention that tickets for game 2 of the series that Friday night in New York were actually selling on the secondary market for a relatively reasonable price.
At the time, I didn’t have money burning a hole in my pocket, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that splurging could be worth it for the rare opportunity to see a pivotal playoff game in person with Amanda. I wasn’t sure, however, how my often introverted and anti-social daughter would feel about going to watch a raucous game with 20,000 insane sports fans. When I mentioned the possibility, she immediately said “sure!”, much to my delight.
Dave snagged four tickets at almost $700 each, the most by far I’d ever spent for a sporting event, but a good price for the circumstances and seat locations. I joked to Amanda that we’d be eating a lot of instant noodles for the next few weeks—something I’d learned from her mother that Chinese people often say following an extravagant purchase.
Arriving at Madison Square Garden, known to many as “the mecca of basketball,” the atmosphere was electric. Watching the game in person compared to on TV was like upgrading to 4K ultra high definition from standard definition, and being in the physical presence of so many other fans rooting ferociously for our team heightened the experience immeasurably, just as studies had suggested.
As the two talented teams clashed, Amanda and I executed our special celebrations for each player with added intensity, sprinkling them in with high fives and fist bumps with Dave and his daughter—and some of our neighbors—at other big moments. It was close, but the Pacers made the big plays when it counted and won by five points. And while we were, of course, deflated by the final result, it had been exhilarating for both of us to be in the building to see our team live in action.
The Knicks eventually wound up losing the series in heartbreaking fashion as the team’s fortitude and good fortune simply ran out. As Amanda and I watched the final seconds tick down, I tried to put things in perspective. I thought about the famous tagline from ABC Sports when I was growing up—”the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat”—and explained to her that in sports, as in life, you can’t have one without the other, to which she merely nodded her head dolefully.
Lessons like these were much of what I had always wished to receive from my own father, who unfortunately lacked the tools and experience to impart them to me. But seeing Amanda absorb and appreciate them has been incredibly healing in its own way, a confirmation that these lessons are important, and one that’s empowering to me as I’ve been able to actively create the kind of relationship I had always craved. My father passed away suddenly earlier this year, and a frequent feeling I’ve experienced as I’ve bonded with Amanda over the Knicks has been sadness—for both myself and my father—that he seldom got to experience this sense of connection and closeness with a child of his.
More than just a game
The Knicks’ offseason came with its own drama, as just a few days after the playoffs ended, the team fired its dyspeptic head coach, who had helped turn the franchise from a joke into a respectable and now even competitive team. Coming so soon after the team’s magical run, we were among many feeling shocked.
To follow that one in-person playoff game, I began to contemplate another splurge: partial season tickets for the upcoming season. One conversation with a fellow fan cemented the decision. Ed was a security guard about my age at a cafe in lower Manhattan where I often worked. After one particularly thrilling playoff victory, my Knicks t-shirt prompted a discussion between us about the game. It turned out he had gone to the game in person, having been a partial season ticket holder for several years.
On subsequent visits, I learned that Ed’s own father had fostered his fandom, taking him and his siblings to Knicks games as kids. Later, Ed and his wife continued the tradition with their kids, despite how expensive tickets had become over the years.
I peppered him with questions about the various season ticket plans and rules, and one day, sensing I was close to pulling the trigger, he put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. “You’re going to be doing a wonderful thing, Nelson,” Ed told me. “Your daughter will never forget going to these games with you.” Given my own remote relationship with my father, I didn’t need much more convincing.
I took Amanda to about half a dozen regular season games, thrilling to the rhythms of the live contests—the solemn renditions of the Star Spangled Banner, the arena-induced prompts to shout “Let’s go, Knicks!” and “Dee-fense!”, the roll call of celebrities on the Jumbotron, and the exuberances—sometimes profane—of the fans around us.
In between those contests, Amanda and I watched most of the other regular season games on television together in a way we never had previously. We discussed the team’s performances and prospects obsessively, and soon began sending each other social media posts and news about the Knicks. Following the Knicks had truly become our shared enterprise.
The victory that mattered most
After an overall good, but quite uneven, regular season in which the team never fully jelled for any length of time, this year’s Knicks finally unlocked their formidable talents when they were fighting for survival early in the playoffs. At one point, they became virtually unbeatable, ripping off an incredible 13 straight wins, and this past weekend, they secured their first championship in 53 long years, an unlikely development that has united our oftentimes fractious city, draping it in an ocean of orange and blue.
As dramatic and exciting as this year’s championship run has been, however, the truth is that Amanda and I already won long ago.
Through the Knicks, I’ve been able to show her how wins can be amplified and losses mitigated by sharing them with loved ones, and she’s witnessed how wonderful it can be to be a part of a group that’s bigger than herself. I’ve shared with her important life lessons about the value of consistent dedication to an ideal, and the importance of being present in the ecstatic moment. Above all, we’ve become closer than ever, and I’m confident that our abiding love for this team will build the foundation for her to come to me whenever she experiences challenges in the future.
One of the things I’ll cherish most about our shared fandom is the gift Amanda got me for Father’s Day last year, right after the team’s surprising run. It’s a hardbound collection of key stories about the Knicks that have been published in The Daily News dating back to 1947, a gift idea she’d seen advertised on Instagram. The cover of the book notes that it was “Presented to Nelson Wang” and the front page bears a personalized inscription from Amanda: “Hope you enjoy reading this as it’s as nerdy as you!”—a playful testament to our shared passion.
What sweeter victory could there be than this?