Videos of Knicks fans celebrating the team's historical win are giving me life

Although mostly proud of NYC in all of its iterations, I've always been baffled by just how consistently disappointing its official basketball team has been. One of the most important cities in the country—filled with fans, money and a strong sports culture—is home to the Knicks, a team with a base of diehard fans who, for the past 20 years, have seemed almost willfully blind to the fact that their team has just never been... good.

You'd assume that NYC could claim more basketball glory than an NBA Finals appearance in 1999 and a last championship win so long ago (1973, to be precise) that current fans may not even have been born yet.

But all that has just changed. The Knicks are finally, officially, almost unbelievably headed to the NBA Finals this year, following a historic sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers, four games to none. We have yet to find out who they'll face: the Western Conference Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs is still very much alive, tied 2-2, with Game 5 tonight. Although I have always told my brother-in-law Jon and my Knicks-obsessed cousins to please live in reality and stop dreaming, I can now confidently say that I have joined the circus, believing in a Knicks win myself—and I was never even a basketball fan. A girl can dream, right? 

Clearly, my feelings are shared across the state. After watching each game with clenched fists, I found myself turning to eBay to buy Brunson shirts for my sons (and, yes, the fact that I once interviewed him and his BFF Hart is my current claim to fame), then scrolling Instagram watching videos of Knicks fans openly weeping over the current state of affairs. Sure, I'm laughing at the fact that grown men (including Timothée Chalamet) are this emotional over a game... but I also find myself tearing up right along with them, because—and I cannot say this loud enough—the Knicks are going to the NBA Finals, baby.

In case you haven't seen these videos yet, here are some of my favorites: