Listen, even if you've never been to New York—even if you don't even care anything about sports whatsoever (like this writer)— you've likely gotten caught up in Knicks fever in recent weeks.
It's hard not to. We all love an underdog story, and waiting 53 years for an NBA championship? Well, the only more-underdog story in sports is probably the Chicago Cubs waiting 109 years to win the World Series in 2016.
But listen, if you haven't been able to muster up any interest in New York's heroic NBA title, you're not alone. There's at least one guy on a recent flight who's right there with you.
A man named Kyle has gone viral on X for sharing a photo from a recent flight he took in which literally everyone on the plane is watching the Knicks and San Antonio Spurs play Game 4 of the NBA Finals.
With the exception of a single passenger watching Avatar instead.
Now of course it's not possible to photograph an ENTIRE plane to verify that he truly was the cheese standing alone.
But there are a good seven or eight rows visible in the photo and you can clearly tell that every in-flight entertainment system in view is tuned to the Knicks/Spurs game except this one, lone Avatar-loving maverick.
Knicks fever was so intense on the plane that Kyle posted a follow-up video in which you can hear the entire plane cheering when the Knicks scored.
But bro was undeterred—you can clearly see in the video that he is still engrossed in Avatar all the while.
Naturally, as soon as Kyle's post went viral, the jokes started rolling in as the internet roasted Avatar guy.
The jokes quickly turned into a meme where people posted their favorite movies or TV shows on the Avatar fan's screen.
While others shared similar experiences they had on a plane, like one person whose entire plane was watching the 2023 Women's World cup except one person watching Lord of the Rings.
The Knicks went on to win that game by a single point after being down by double digits earlier in the game.
They performed the same kind of magic in game five on June 13, beating the Spurs 94–90 and clinching the NBA championship title in the process.
It's the Knicks' first NBA championship win since 1973, and the city of New York is, of course, euphoric. Celebrations broke out all over the city and even Mayor Zohran Mamdani appeared with a Knicks jersey under his suit jacket.
Much of the country is celebrating right along with the Big Apple. Given how dark pretty much everything else in America is at the moment, the Knicks big underdog win feels like a huge breath of fresh air.
And if superstition holds, it might just bring even happier ones soon enough.
Just weeks after the Cubs' underdog World Series win in 2016, we fell headlong into the Trump era, and many have long theorized that that big upset was some sort of "glitch in the matrix" that put us on the dumbest—and soon darkest—timelines.
Now, many are theorizing that the Knicks' unlikely win will finally close that chapter once and for all and exit us from the astral plane of the past decade.
That alone makes the Knicks worth celebrating, just in case all that positivity actually works!
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