The Knicks closed out the Hawks last night. 140-89. A 51-point win to end a first round series that, if I’m being honest, had me nervous for a couple of days in the middle. They went down 2-1 after losing a heartbreaker by one point in Game 2, and for about 48 hours the city had that familiar feeling. The one where you start bracing yourself for the thing you’ve seen too many times.
Then they won three straight, including a Game 6 that set an NBA record for largest halftime lead in playoff history. OG had 29, Mikal had 24, KAT got his second triple-double of the series, and the whole thing felt like more than just a series closeout. Now we wait for tonight’s Game 7 between the Celtics and Sixers to find out who’s next.
I’ve been a Knicks fan my entire life. Grew up in Queens watching games with my family. Sat through the Isiah Thomas years. Watched us trade away picks that turned into other teams’ franchise players. Watched season after season of teams that were either bad or good enough to get your hopes up and then break your heart in April. If you’ve been a Knicks fan for any meaningful stretch of time, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s not just losing. It’s the specific rhythm of believing and then watching it fall apart that makes being a Knicks fan feel like a personality trait more than a hobby.
Playoff momentum in NYC changes how the whole city feels
This is the part that’s hard to explain to people who don’t live here. When the Knicks are winning in the playoffs, the city is different, and I don’t mean that in some vague, poetic way. It’s actually, physically different. The bodegas have the game on. Strangers on the subway are talking about the series. You walk past a bar and you can hear the crowd react in real time. The energy at the Garden bleeds out into the surrounding blocks and somehow reaches the rest of the five boroughs within hours.
I noticed it walking through Midtown the day after Game 5. People were wearing Knicks gear in a way that felt different from regular season fandom. There was a looseness to it. People were making eye contact and nodding. If you had a Knicks hat on, you were in on something. It’s a small thing, but this city doesn’t usually give you that. New York is not a place where strangers typically acknowledge each other on the street. Playoff basketball changes the social contract for a few weeks.
Running a cleaning business in NYC taught me what the Knicks keep teaching me
I’ve been running this business since 2012. We’ve cleaned over 100,000 homes across the city. And the thing that connects running a company in New York to being a Knicks fan is actually pretty simple. It’s the relationship between patience and belief.
Most of what running a business looks like from the inside is not the exciting stuff. It’s the daily grind that nobody sees. Scheduling issues, callbacks, hiring, training, dealing with problems that don’t have clean solutions. It’s years of doing the boring work and trusting that it’s building toward something. You don’t get a lot of dramatic breakthrough moments. Most progress is invisible until you look back over a long enough timeline.
The Knicks have been doing something similar. Not this season specifically, but the last few years of roster building. They made moves that didn’t all make sense in the moment. They were patient when fans wanted them to panic. They trusted a process that took longer than anyone wanted it to. And now they’re sitting at home, resting, waiting for the next round, because they did the work.
I think about that a lot. Not because basketball and business are the same thing. They’re obviously not. But the emotional pattern is really similar. You commit to something for a long time with no guarantee it’s going to work, and then one day you’re suddenly ahead, and it feels like it happened overnight even though you know exactly how long it actually took.
NYC energy during the playoffs reminds you why you’re here
One of the odd things about living in New York for a long time is that you can forget why you’re here. The city is expensive, inconvenient, loud, and crowded. If you’re running a business, it’s all of that plus the stress of operating in one of the most competitive markets in the country. There are easier places to live and easier places to work. I think about that sometimes, honestly.
Then the playoffs happen and you remember. You remember that there’s no other city where a basketball game can change the mood of eight million people. You remember that the difficulty is part of the point. The reason New York feels the way it does when something good happens is because of how hard everything else is. The highs mean more here because the baseline is already so demanding. A playoff win in some other city is just a playoff win. A Knicks playoff series win in New York is a city-wide experience.
That’s the same reason I like running a business here. The apartment cleanings, the logistics of getting teams across five boroughs, the clients who expect a level of service that matches what they pay for a one-bedroom. It’s hard. And the difficulty makes the wins feel earned in a way they wouldn’t somewhere else.
The Knicks second round is going to be a different kind of hard
I don’t know who we’re playing next. By the time most people read this, the Celtics and Sixers will have finished their Game 7 and the bracket will be set. Either way, the second round is a different animal. The Hawks series had moments where I was genuinely worried, particularly that one-point loss in Game 2 and the road loss in Game 3. The next series is going to have more of those moments, probably harder ones.
But I think that’s fine. Actually, I think that’s the whole point. The thing I’ve learned from both basketball and from building something over a long period of time is that the difficult stretches aren’t obstacles to the good part. They are the good part. The nervous energy before a big game, the uncertainty of whether your team can actually do it, the moments where it looks like it might fall apart. That’s where the meaning comes from. A smooth, easy path to a championship wouldn’t feel like anything. The struggle is what makes the payoff real.
We’re heading into the second round. The city is locked in. I’ve got a house cleaning schedule to manage, a deep clean backlog to get through before we book out the week, and a playoff series to watch. Honestly, I can’t think of a better combination for a May in New York.
The Knicks are moving on, and if you’re a fan, you already know what that means for this city, so enjoy it. We’ve waited a long time for this to feel real again.
