as the New York Knicks, millionaire athletes “owned” by a billionaire, compete with other millionaires in the finals of the National Basketball Association. Instead, New Yorkers are gathering in each other’s homes, piling into bars and thronging sidewalks outside restaurants to stare through the windows at the video screens as the Knicks, who have not won a championship in 53 years, contend with the San Antonio Spurs. Gloom has nowhere been in evidence. Even grumbling, habitual among New York’s capitalists at least as much as among its socialists, has been hard to hear over all the cheering. “What is really cool about this is it doesn’t matter if you’re red or blue, it doesn’t matter what the colour of your skin is, everybody’s in it,” says Aniket Gune, as he joins two colleagues from a meditation practice and thousands of other fans on June 8th for a free watch party in Bryant Park, in Manhattan, for game three of the best-of-seven series. One of his colleagues, Ratna Mukani, adds, “Everyone is just happy and so nice to each other. And there’s so much love.” Rising over the park lawn, the Empire State Building was lit at dusk in the Knicks colours of blue and orange, a combination that can also now be found, revoltingly, on bagels, pizza and cinnamon rolls. Spectators outside the arena have not been complaining much about those inside. They know that celebrities such as Spike Lee and Ben Stiller were courtside even during the lean times, when the Knicks went a decade without a winning season. What matters is that they are all fans. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose own run of political luck now includes this Knicks season, displayed his gift for making the most of that luck with the best description of what’s happening: “It feels like the transformation of the world’s greatest city into the world’s greatest small town.” The Knicks’ long championship drought and famously rabid fan base help explain the euphoria. So does the fact that this Knicks team does not fit the caricature of New Yorkers (and of capitalists) as self-obsessed, grasping, indifferent to the wants of lesser mortals. Speaking of which: as though out to prove that his fellow New Yorkers can indeed still see red, President Donald Trump chose to attend game three in Madison Square Garden, drawing a thunder of boos after his presence upended the plans of thousands by forcing the cancellation of a watch party outside.
These Knicks are instead celebrated for some less-recognised qualities of New Yorkers, the ones that make the city liveable even if the subways are too slow, the rats too cheeky and the rent too damn high: their decency, playfulness and generosity towards each other. Interviewed courtside, these Knicks tend to say things like, “I don’t have an ego, that got burned out of my heart a long time ago. And I’m out here to serve these dudes.” (So said Josh Hart, a guard who even more than most Knicks can be as earnest as he can be droll.) Jalen Brunson, the poker-faced, physically unprepossessing point guard hailed these days as the king of New York, has led the team not just through brilliant playmaking but by opting not to take the maximum salary available to him when he extended his contract in 2024. He left $113m on the table so the Knicks could afford other standout players under the league’s combined salary cap. Mr Brunson, Mr Hart and a third Knicks guard, Mikal Bridges, were college champions together ten years ago when they played on the same team at Villanova University. They form the nucleus of a “five-out” offence, in which not just one or two stars but all five teammates are capable of scoring from anywhere on the floor; their constant passing keeps the defence on the run. Combined with their own relentless defence, this strategy brought the Knicks 13 straight playoff victories. That included the first two games against the Spurs, a more conventional team built around a crane-like, implausibly nimble centre, Victor Wembanyama. The Spurs snapped that streak by winning game three. But then in game four on June 10th the Knicks surpassed even their own previous nail-biting feats of resilience by achieving the greatest comeback in finals history. They overcame a 29-point Spurs lead to win by 1. Does the from-each-according-to-their-ability ethos of the Knicks herald a socialist future for New York? It does not, and not only because the players flog everything from burritos to underwear. Before the Spurs’ game-three victory ruined the chance of a sweep along with the rhyme scheme, fans had taken up a chant celebrating not just the city’s pluralism but its consumerism: “My mayor Muslim!/My bagel Jewish!/My Christian Dior!/Knicks in four!” Maybe the Knicks’ ethos and style of play point instead towards a more enlightened capitalism, one in tune with other enduring qualities of New
Yorkers: pragmatism, unpretentiousness and fierce ambition. The stoical Mr Brunson showed a rare flash of irritation recently when a reporter noted that “some stars” would expect, unlike him, to dominate more of the play. “First, I’m not a star,” Mr Brunson replied evenly. “Second, I want to win.” ■ Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our Opinion newsletter, which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//united-states/2026/06/11/the-knicks-represent-new-york- and-capitalism-at-its-best
Essay From morning in America to endless conflict How the war on terror primed America for autocracy
From morning in America to endless conflict June 11th 2026 1980sAmerica’s Thatcher A mood of national decline hung over America as it entered the 1980s. Ronald Reagan, an affable former actor and governor of California, seized the moment with a campaign for the presidency lamenting the country’s stagnation and promising renewal with a slogan: “Let’s make America great again.” [Stares into camera.] He won in a landslide over the incumbent Jimmy Carter. At the heart of Reagan’s agenda was a call to pull back the state and give markets a freer hand—ideas which we like to think he cribbed from Margaret Thatcher, then the prime minister of Britain (and from The Economist, if we’re being honest). Like Thatcher, he reshaped politics in his country. One of his punchlines—“The nine scariest words in the English
language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help’”—put supporters of the welfare state on the back foot. It still defines American conservatism to this day. And he gave America “Reaganomics”, or “trickle-down economics”—the idea that lowering taxes on the rich and on corporations spurs investment and job creation. This remains Republican orthodoxy despite mixed results under Reagan (and more recently). Inequality widened, as did the budget deficit. But economic growth rebounded. As Reagan would crow during his successful re-election campaign in 1984, it was “morning again in America”. 1987-89“Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall” Reagan was also a born-again Christian who put God at the centre of his staunch opposition to the godless faith of communism. He famously described the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” (in a speech to, less famously, evangelical Christians). But he did not just rely on God being on America’s side. He significantly boosted defence spending, investing (secretly) in costly, experimental new stealth fighters and bombers—while pouring billions into an unproven missile-defence system nicknamed, appropriately enough for combatting an empire, “Star Wars”. He also escalated America’s nuclear arms race with the Soviets. Reagan was pursuing “peace through strength”. And, much to the surprise of critics, he pursued peace at the negotiating table, too, forging major nuclear- arms-reduction treaties with Mikhail Gorbachev. The president’s policies hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the former actor was arguably as influential for nailing his line deliveries. In 1987 Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate by the Berlin Wall and declared, “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Two years later, the wall fell. Coincidence? We think not. Culture, conflict and a frightening new disease In 1981 doctors in California and New York began reporting unusual infections among young gay men. Fear and misinformation spread rapidly around the mysterious illness, which many Americans saw—and stigmatised —as a “gay disease”. As the AIDS crisis took hold, Reagan kept silent. He did not publicly mention the epidemic until 1985, after his actor friend Rock
Hudson was dying from the illness. The federal government eventually increased funding for research into the disease and potential treatments (led by a young Anthony Fauci, who will also make an appearance in the next chapter). But AIDS would become much more than a scientific mystery and medical tragedy. It also exposed and widened cultural cracks that were forming within American society. Religious conservatives, by now a major political force, framed AIDS as a consequence of immoral behaviour and resisted pragmatic responses such as condom distribution and explicit sex education. Conflicts over sexuality, race, religion, education and artistic freedom were intensifying, and moving to the centre of political life. They became known as the “culture wars”: a seemingly permanent argument over what it meant to be American. This is your prison system on drugs Though it was Richard Nixon who first declared a “war on drugs”, Reagan dramatically escalated it. Violent crime had been rising for decades and by the 1980s crack cocaine had become a scourge, contributing to a pervasive sense of fear and urban decay. Reagan’s administration—with bipartisan support—treated drug use as a crime rather than an addiction, expanding policing and backing legislation that imposed mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences. The first lady, Nancy Reagan, urged children to “just say no”. Black and white Americans used drugs at broadly similar rates, but enforcement patterns differed sharply by race. Penalties for crack cocaine, which was more common in poor urban communities, were far harsher than those for powder cocaine, more associated with affluent white users. Black Americans were disproportionately arrested and incarcerated. One of the most enduring consequences of the war on drugs was a vast expansion of the prison population. By the end of the 20th century America incarcerated a larger share of its population than any other democracy, a distinction it retains today. Oh, and global cocaine consumption? That is at record highs. When greed became good