Knicks championship – As the Knicks’ playoff run pulls New York into one shared obsession, lifelong fans and local tattoo artists say people are filling studios with permanent tributes—some even planned before the championship is decided—covering bodies with pigeons, Brunson sleeve
On Monday, lifelong New Yorker Adrian Reyes finally moved his idea from daydream to stencil. The tattoo he’s been envisioning during this historic Knicks playoff run is a pigeon donning a Jalen Brunson jersey.
“There’s no better way to think about New York than, quite honestly, a pigeon,” Reyes says. “They’re everywhere.”
And in his telling, they aren’t just everywhere—they’re stubborn. “They’re persistent — like the Knicks,” Reyes says. “They’re resilient. They keep fighting. ” and then he connects it to what he sees every season: “Just like Knicks fans. we’re always here. We flock out of anywhere and everywhere to every single game. Look at the Sixers series. We took over that stadium.”.
Reyes points to the details that feel small until you’re living inside them: “Think of all those birds that were there chirping.”
That’s why the pigeon isn’t a novelty for him. “There’s no way to better describe a New Yorker,” Reyes continues, “than guys that love to chirp.”
The tattoo will be on his thigh. Reyes says it isn’t too personal to admit the reason it matters beyond style: “Not to be TMI,” he says. “But anytime you use the bathroom, shower, anything like that, you’ll always have this image to look at and remind you and make you smile.”
Reyes isn’t alone. Knicks fans have been flocking to tattoo parlors all over New York City to commemorate this moment. Requests range from the standard Knicks logo to entire player sleeves. and tattoo artists describe a demand that feels bigger than usual—because for New Yorkers who have waited their entire lives. the chance to see the team in the sun has finally arrived.
Even before the finals, diehard fans had been getting Knicks tattoos. Adam Korothy. a tattoo artist at Live By The Sword in Williamsburg. says. “By the time we swept the Cavs. it started reaching a fever pitch.” And he says it hasn’t relented. “He’s gotten requests in recent days from two Knicks City Dancers,” Korothy adds.
In the shop, Korothy describes how quickly the “moment” became the reason. “Last night,” Korothy says, “a family of three all came in to get Knicks tattoos at the same time.”
Val Klimovich. also at Live By The Sword. recalls a different kind of conflict—domestic. casual. and immediately resolved by stubborn faith. “One local gentleman stopped by to get a Knicks tattoo on his chest. right in the middle. during the lunch break and his wife texted him. ‘You don’t have to come home if you’ll get that ugly tattoo. I’m not looking at that every time I see you shirtless.’ He got it anyway. I hope they’re still together!”.
The Knicks’ run is the biggest topic by far around the shop. Korothy says. tying the new ink directly to what people can’t stop talking about on TV and in conversations. “I am still in shock from OG (Anunoby’s) phenomenal tip-in. We have definitely seen more and more interest in our Knicks flash after Game 4,” Korothy says.
Korothy says they haven’t gone a day without it. “We haven’t had one client, visitor or person not mention OG’s dagger of a tip-in since it happened. It’s pretty much all we talk about.” He plans to get a Knicks tattoo as well.
Across town, Mikhail Andersson, owner of First Class Tattoo, says the run has flipped demand in a way he’s never seen. First Class Tattoo has been open for a decade. “This is the first time that any clients have been interested in getting Knicks tattoos,” Andersson says.
He tells a story that sounds like family history more than sports fandom: one man in his 60s came in for the logo tattooed on his arm. Andersson says the man told them he is “a very proud native New Yorker” and that he comes from “two New Yorker parents.” The Knicks. Andersson says. became a family tradition—something “a way to connect with his son now.”.
Nikita Shoshensky. a lifelong New Yorker who focuses on large-scale Japanese tattoos. says he started out thinking he’d mainly attract his usual circle. He created a bunch of Knicks-Japanese-infused tattoos, then watched the idea take off. “I thought probably it would be my usual clients,” Shoshensky says. “Until it began to take off. ‘I’ve seen lot of interest.’”.
Some of the tattoos are bold enough to read like declarations.
Last Monday, Justin Chi from the Upper East Side got a tattoo on his right hand that said: KNICKS IN 4 25-26 NBA CHAMPIONS. He doesn’t regret being wrong about the first half of the tattoo—because the Knicks lost Game 3 on Monday—explaining that he’s convinced the second part will be true.
“I know we’re gonna win,” Chi says.
He links the decision to the feeling in his body while he watched the game, and to the belief he says made it feel inevitable. “I believe in destiny and I believe in the Knicks. It just felt right,” Chi says. His voice is raspy from screaming with his father at Game 4.
Chi says he has no regrets. “I think I’m just gonna cross out the four and put in a five,” Chi says. “It’s something I will remember for the rest of my life.”
Rich Creavy, meanwhile, didn’t wait for the end of the playoffs to mark the moment. The afternoon before Game 3, Creavy got a large tattoo of skyscrapers, the Knicks logo and FINALS 2026 CHAMPIONS in big, bold lettering on his right arm.
“I didn’t want to wait till it was over,” Creavy says.
He says that even if the title doesn’t happen. he won’t regret it—because the alternative is too painful to even describe. “If The Knicks Lose The Title” isn’t a sentence to be uttered, he says. He adds that some in his life accused him of jinxing the team. He didn’t care. “The Knicks are such a likable team that I’ll never regret the tattoo based on these guys.”.
What ties these choices together isn’t just the art. Tattoo artists and fans describe a shared hunger to capture something that feels once-in-a-lifetime—not only in the arena, but outside of it, in the way people begin talking on streets they’ve walked every day.
There’s a strange, sweet feeling of hope showing up on skin while the games are still happening. In the shops, the belief is practical: this isn’t ink for later. It’s ink for now.
Yves Voltaire from Harlem says his tattoo was “a lifetime in the making.” He got a Knicks logo on his left deltoid, above the bicep, seven hours before Wednesday’s Game 4. Voltaire says the timing wasn’t an accident—his appointment was booked months in advance.
“This is an exhalation for the city and for us fans,” Voltaire says. “We’re reveling. We’re spinning. We’re cheering, we’re cheesing.” And he names the reason he says the joy feels different this year: “Because we’ve been through some stuff.”
Voltaire also describes what it looked like when the game gave the city another reason to erupt. Watching Anunoby’s play, arm in arm with his nearly 70-year-old neighbor, he says the two jumped up and down and screamed like kids on a hotel bed.
“When you see us in the streets cheesing following another playoff win, what you’re really seeing is us punching the air with our smiles,” Voltaire says. “Punching the air with joy, with bewilderment, with affirmation. Like, yo, this is really happening?!”
Julia S. Dalton-Brush, raised in Manhattan and the Bronx, chose a more intimate placement. She got a Knicks logo tattoo right behind her left ear.
“It’s close to where I hear this city every day,” Dalton-Brush says, adding that she wanted the symbol near a place she associates with the constant sound of home. “And I felt like the right place for something that’s been such a constant in my life.”
Dalton-Brush says the Knicks have been her team since she started hooping at age 5. “They’re part of my city’s identity,” she says. “To me, the Knicks represent resilience, loyalty and hope.”
She ties that to the city’s social life too. “Unity, too,” Dalton-Brush says. “The city can be so divided. The Knicks bring people together.”
Queens resident Nolan Parr took his belief all the way to a sleeve. He got a sleeve of Brunson with his iconic pose on his left leg. Parr went to the Knicks watch party, and his tattoo was featured on the Jumbotron.
The subway, though, brought the most direct validation. Parr says that when he rode the train after the event. “I had a guy stop [and look at my tattoo] and he was like. ‘You’re the biggest diehard I’ve ever seen. That takes commitment.” Parr calls that the coolest compliment from a fellow New Yorker.
He says he wants to add to it next—possibly including a portrait of OG. “We’re going to keep probably adding players and basketball imagery,” says artist Josh Glasser, who did Parr’s tattoo.
Jimi Noel from Brooklyn made his decision fast. Noel got the Knicks logo tattoo on his right bicep the morning after Game 2, inspired by Brunson’s clutch fadeaway shot.
“That’s when I said, yeahhhh, this is different!” Noel says. “I’ve wanted to get this tattoo for a few years now so it was long overdue.”
Ricardo “Chico” Jimenez, an artist out of Hard Knox Tattoo in Yonkers, created a sleeve of Brunson praying. “If Jalen ran for mayor, he’d win,” Jimenez says. “That’s how much love New York has for him and the team.”
For artists, the tattoo rush isn’t only about demand. Royal Jafarov of Royal Tattoo Art, an appointment-only studio based in the Lower East Side, says he feels a deeper kind of belonging through the work.
“Personally, I have never felt more like a New Yorker, which means a lot to me as an immigrant and a recent citizen,” Jafarov says.
Even the risk—getting a championship tattoo before the championship—doesn’t cool the momentum. Tattoo artists describe how the uncertainty doesn’t erase the act. If anything, it makes it louder.
“If they win, the city is gonna burn,” says Ivan Valladares Ramos, a tattoo artist at Magic Cobra Tattoo Society in Brooklyn. “If they lose, the city is definitely gonna burn.”
Manhattan-based tattoo artist Esteban Caasi of Caasi Tattoo Studio posted a photo of Knicks tattoos he has done during this run. Someone commented, “What happens if they don’t win?”
Avalos wrote back: “You remain a fan.” Caasi says the people liking the comment warmed his heart.
Lina Valentina, the tattoo artist from Noble Art Tattoo Studio who created Reyes’ pigeon, says the meaning goes beyond ink. “Seeing the joy these tattoos bring to people reminds me that tattooing is about more than ink. it’s about capturing a moment. ” Valentina says. “Being trusted to create something that commemorates a historic championship run is an honor. and it’s exciting to know that artists get to play a small part in preserving these memories for years to come.”.
World’s Fair Tattoo in Astoria, Queens, has long been doing Mets tattoos. Now, Knicks ones are in demand.
Sara Antoinette Martin, a tattoo artist from World’s Fair, says people are calling to book now “for when they win the championship.”
“The energy is bigger than just the Knicks winning a championship,” Martin says. “It’s the underdog story that makes it so much more relatable. David vs Goliath. The Brunsons that have been grinding for years up against a literal giant golden boy from France who has so much support behind him. It’s the underdog story that unites New Yorkers and gives us so much pride to be here and be a part of it.”.
In New York right now, that pride isn’t waiting. It’s showing up in studios, in subway conversations, on Jumbotrons and thighs, hands and chests—everywhere a person wants to remember what it felt like to believe out loud.
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