All is well inside Madison Square Garden, the basketball mecca where the New York Knicks play. The team has won 10 consecutive playoff games and appears poised to return to the N.B.A. finals for the first time in more than a quarter-century.
But outside the Garden, the police said six people were arrested after the latest Knicks’ home game on Thursday. Brawls broke out and fans leaped police barriers and threw glass as an estimated crowd of 6,000 rang in another victory. Over-the-top fan celebrations are nothing new, but the raucous and occasionally violent scenes outside the Garden have worsened over time.
Now the party is over. New York City officials have canceled the gatherings outside the arena, leaving some loyal fans to rue that a beautiful tradition has been ruined by that ancient sports enemy: fake fans — posers — using the vivid scenes outside the Garden as fuel for viral videos.
Those videos have come to define Knicks fandom online and, increasingly, in person. Five years ago, Sidetalk — a popular cross-platform account specializing in man-on-the-street content — shot a video showing fans outside the Garden celebrating a double-overtime victory against the Boston Celtics too emphatically and crudely to even be linked to by The New York Times. Its crucial moment was its most brief and, perhaps, family friendly: A fan named Jordie Bloom shouted, “Bing Bong.”
Before the existence of the social internet, the phrase, which refers to the sound the subway doors make as they close, might have been a shibboleth, an insider slogan Knicks fans traded after wins. But the video went viral. It’s been viewed more than 6 million times on YouTube and Instagram, and “Bing Bong” has become a catchphrase. And while rowdy postgame celebrations are a staple of professional sports, Knicks fans and N.B.A. insiders believe that the video helped supercharge the atmosphere outside Madison Square Garden.
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