There was a moment on Sunday morning when, scrolling through pages of content celebrating the New York Knicks’ spectacular NBA championship win in the city – videos in which it seemed people of every age, race, background and zip code put aside their differences to hug and scream – I wondered how far the principle of sport-as-the-ultimate-leveller might stretch.
For example: given the joy on Saturday night was so intense, could you have sent the most hated figures in the US into the ecstatic Knicks viewing parties – those gatherings of thousands who came together to watch the game projected on to the sides of buildings – and witnessed the joy of the event transform them into regular humans? Greg Bovino, say, the loathed former US border tsar in his soldier-of-fortune Halloween costume – pop a jaunty Knicks cap on his head and might he elicit high fives? What about ICE agents in Knicks jerseys? I tried to imagine Elon Musk – a man who has surely never thrown, caught or enjoyed watching a ball in flight in his life – attending a Knicks party and experiencing, possibly for the first time, a group of people who appeared genuinely pleased to see him.
