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We Can’t Let the Good Vibes Stop Us From Demanding More of Mamdani

Mamdani’s Knicks speech was exhilarating, but we can’t let these kinds of spectacles prevent us from pressuring politicians to do better.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and OG Anunoby of the New York Knicks on a float during the New York Knicks Championship ticker tape parade and victory rally celebrating winning the 2026 NBA Finals.

I coach youth basketball because I love both the sport and seeing young people discover that by working together, they can be greater than the sum of their parts. But on a selfish level, I do it for the speeches. I love giving the sports speech: the rallying cry that, if delivered correctly, can unite a team and make even timid kids roar like lions. Until last week, the greatest sports speech I ever heard was fictional: Al Pacino as coach Tony D’Amato in Any Given Sunday telling his fraying team that they had to “find out life’s this game of inches.… On this team…we claw with our fingernails for that inch because we know when we add up all those inches, that’s going to make the fucking difference between winning and losing, between living and dying.” On some tough days, watching that speech is my morning coffee.

Recently, though, I heard a new all-time favorite. But I’m wrestling with my ardor for the message and messenger.

I have been waiting my entire life for my favorite team, the New York Knicks, to win a title. Then, at a championship parade for the ages that I was fortunate enough to attend, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in just over eight minutes, brought the thunder in a sports speech that will be replayed as long as anyone wears the orange-and-blue. He centered his remarks around the unfathomable 29-point comeback that the team made in the pivotal game four of the series. He reminded his audience that when the team fell by 29 points, the number-crunchers said that they had a 99.6 percent chance of losing the game. Then the mayor said the following:

“But there is one thing that the pundits just don’t get about this team—that they just don’t get about this city. It’s in that 0.4 percent that we go to work. It’s in that 0.4 percent that Jalen Brunson—the same guy that so many said was too small—proves that not only is he good enough; he is the new standard for greatness. It’s in that 0.4 percent that OG Anunoby watches the ball float from the top of the arc and starts running toward the basket, fingers reaching towards the heavens. It’s in that 0.4 percent that Karl-Anthony Towns finds the strength to mourn his mother and still pull in rebound after rebound, make block after block. It’s in that 0.4 percent that Jose Alvarado shows every kid growing up in public housing that a son of Brooklyn and Queens can win for every one of the five boroughs. It’s in that 0.4 percent that Mitch breaks his finger before game one and says, ‘Go get the tape.” It’s in that 0.4 percent that Josh Hart gets rebounds that break teams, that Mikal........

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