NEW YORK >> They poured out of Madison Square Garden and the surrounding bars, draped in Jalen Brunson jerseys and other Knicks paraphernalia, chanting and yelling and exulting as they clogged Seventh Avenue and brought traffic to a halt.

The New York Knicks had just defeated the Indiana Pacers in the first game of the Eastern Conference semifinals, but some fans celebrated as if they had just won a championship. When that hasn’t happened in 50 years, it helps explain the elation.

A few days earlier, there was a similar flash mob of crazed young Knicks fans thronging the front of the Garden after the Knicks eliminated the 76ers in the first round of the playoffs. And that game was in Philadelphia.

No New York sports team can captivate the city quite like the Knicks. And for the first time in a decade, they are a very good basketball team, and the city is taking notice. Within moments of the victory over the Pacers on Monday, the Empire State Building glowed blue and orange, beaming Knicks pride out to Gotham like a bat signal.

The team has been somewhat decent for a few years, but this version is different. This group is led by Brunson, a humble, team-first overachiever who, along with the rest of the Knicks, has transfixed the city in a way reminiscent of Patrick Ewing’s 1990s teams.

On Wednesday, the Garden once again erupted in triumph, as the Knicks overcame adversity — Brunson suffered a mysterious foot injury and missed the second quarter — to capture Game 2 against the Pacers and add another dash of belief to the once-crazy notion that this group could win the team’s first championship since 1973. They face the Pacers again on Friday, this time in Indianapolis.

“Outside the arena there has been a lot of talk, a lot of excitement,” Brunson said last week. “I just love the fact that New York is really embracing us.”

The 2024 Knicks play hard. They are fun, united and unassuming, and Brunson has emerged as the most appealing athlete in New York right now. More relatable than Aaron Judge of the Yankees, less egomaniacal than Aaron Rodgers of the Jets, and more dependable than anyone on the Mets, the Liberty or the Giants. He is even more productive than Artemi Panarin, the Rangers’ superstar scorer.

With his 43 points in the Knicks’ Game 1 win over Indiana, Brunson became the first player to score 40 points in each of four straight playoff games since Michael Jordan in 1993. Yes, that Michael Jordan. When Brunson was asked about it after the game, a teammate leaned into the interview, incredulous. He turned to Brunson and repeated: “Jordan?”

Brunson, flashing the same impeccable timing that he does on the court, replied, “Stop.”

That charm, combined with Brunson’s hardworking ethos, is a prime reason that old and new fans are flocking to the Knicks after ignoring decades of embarrassing malfunctions.

Maria Luisa Rocca, for example, is in her mid-90s and didn’t watch much basketball before this year. A native of Colombia, she came to the United States in 1956 and moved to Manhattan only eight years ago to be close to her sons, who were not major hoops fans, either.

Most nights she watched baseball on television, and she paid little, if any, attention to the New York NBA team. Until this year.

Now, for her and many of her fellow New Yorkers, the Knicks — and particularly Brunson — have become appointment viewing, and elevator rides around the city are spent reliving the glory and marveling at Brunson’s latest magic.

“I have to watch the games,” Rocca said from her apartment in Greenwich Village. “I love this team, and Brunson is the best. He always shares credit. Some teams are bullies. Not the Knicks.”

Once thought of as a complementary player, Brunson averaged 28.7 points per game this year, the fourth-highest in the NBA. His father is Rick Brunson, a former Knicks player and a current assistant coach on the team. When Jalen was a toddler in the late 1990s, he could usually be found in the Knicks locker room, bouncing a basketball that was almost as big as he was.

Now 27 and 6-foot-2, he shoots from the outside, slithers inside, hits turnaround jumpers with ease and passes unselfishly. He scores when the team needs scoring, passes when it needs passing and rebounds when it needs a board.

In this year’s playoffs, Brunson leads all players with 35.6 points per game. That includes 47 in Game 4 of the first-round series against the Sixers, which is more than any Knick had ever scored in a postseason game — more than Bernard King, Patrick Ewing or even Walt Frazier, the greatest point guard in club history, who won the franchise’s only championships, in 1970 and 1973.

Point guard for the Knickerbockers is a venerated position in the city, like conductor of the New York Philharmonic, manager of the Yankees or head chef at Gage & Tollner. It’s even up there with being the mayor, although Brunson has no known detractors.

“Brunson has been all of that,” Frazier said Monday at the Garden. “He’s being compared to me and my team and what we accomplished. They haven’t won a title yet, but he’s on the threshold, and it’s great everyone is talking about them.”

That includes a crush of A-listers — Cardi B, Sting, Julianne Moore, Tracee Ellis Ross — suddenly scrambling for courtside seats. But this team is not a Hollywood production. It is a real group that ordinary citizens identify with, like Evan Wilson, an archaeologist who moved to New York from Los Angeles seven years ago. Tossing aside his Laker fandom, Wilson now supports the Knicks, watching most games with a group of regulars at Jimmy’s Corner in Midtown Manhattan.

“There may not be as much superstar talent as other teams,” Wilson said, “but they make you want to cheer for them. I’m definitely a convert.”

As are the throngs who pack Madison Square Garden in their Brunson jerseys — No. 11 was by far the most popular shirt in the building and on the streets. At last accounting in March, Brunson’s shirt was the 15th most popular in the world, according to the NBA. The next audit should reveal a rise in sales as more and more people discover the thrill of the Knicks roll.

“There is nothing like it,” said OG Anunoby, a forward who also was injured Wednesday night; unlike Brunson, he did not return, and he has been ruled out for Game 3. “It’s electric. All of us, we feel it, and we love it.”

For the first time in years, much of New York loves it, too.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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