New York Loves Someone to Hate

Wembanyama now provides purpose: Galvanizing Knicks fans and summoning heroes.

Victor Wembanyama of the Spurs has become the new figure for New York fans to take out frustrations on.

‘I’m nowhere near Trae Young level, though.’
   - VICTOR WEMBANYAMA, the latest villain in Knicks lore.

MARCUS THOMPSON II - The Athletic

The New York Times - Mercoledì 10 giugno 2026

Pagina 28

Gotham always needs a villain.

New York prefers someone to revile, someone to rally against. This city is girded with grievances: the abysmal traffic, the absurd rent, the oppressive weather, the idiot tourist in the way on a busy sidewalk, the taxi darting across three lanes with no blinker, the neighbor who somehow got a better deal.

This city wakes up looking for a place to put its fury.

And because of New York’s significance as a city at the center of so much American excellence, it attracts as much resentment as it does admiration.

It makes New Yorkers a proud and protective people. That tension fuels New York’s character and gives the city its charm, its toughness.

It translates to New Yorkers’ fandom.

Fittingly, New York sports history is littered with villains: Tom Brady, Pedro Martinez, Sidney Crosby.

And the Knicks? The one team that claims all of New York? The franchise New Yorkers love like family members? Their fans hated the guts of several opponents: Michael Jordan, Reggie Miller, Alonzo Mourning. Tyrese Haliburton joined the ranks a year ago.

On Monday, Knicks fans identified their next villain: Victor Wembanyama.

They proclaimed him the antagonist of this glorious Knicks season by serenading him with their favorite four-letter word, all but a term of endearment when hurled at opposing superstars.

If it felt this supposed disdain for Wembanyama came out of nowhere, that’s because it did. The bliss of 13 consecutive postseason wins by the Knicks and a 2-0 lead in the N.B.A. finals filled fans’ hearts with too much joy to be aggrieved. Inebriated off the invincibility of their beloved squad, they had not bothered anointing a new villain.

And then Wembanyama proceeded to deconstruct the Knicks in Game 3: 32 points on 18 shots, 8 rebounds, 6 assists and 3 blocks in 39 minutes. He took his show, a preview of his future dominance, onto the N.B.A.’s biggest stage. Wembanyama’s first monster N.B.A. finals performance not only recalibrated the Spurs’ title hopes, lifting San Antonio to a 115-111 road win, it reminded Knicks fans that this generational talent has the capacity to ruin their dream season.

On Monday, Wembanyama introduced the possibility of taking what looked to be the culmination of the Knicks’ magical season and crumpling it like a printed chapter of another New York heartbreak story.

Fear arrived in Game 3. So a villain he became.

“I guess,” Wembanyama said before taking his typically long pause to gather his thoughts.

“I’m nowhere near Trae Young level, though.” 

He smiled. Wembanyama understands what is happening.

He tipped off his awareness with his mention of Young, who became an enemy to the Orange and Blue in the 2021 playoffs when he trolled Knicks fans after bouncing their team.

But that beef with Young came in a first-round matchup. These are the N.B.A. finals. And Wembanyama stands in the way of ending a 53-year championship drought.

Every great city tells itself stories. And New York loves the villains. It morphs opponents into antagonists in the city’s perennial pursuit of glory it is forever owed.

Hate, however, is Knicks fans’ love language. They declare respect through vexation.

Knicks fans are die-hards, true hoops fans who know the game.

They recognize the extraterrestrial before them. They appreciate transcendent talent while they root for its demise. And Knicks fans’ villainizing of Wembanyama is about recognizing his eliteness. Because villains provide purpose. They galvanize people. They summon heroes.

They provide an outlet for frustration and fear.

Knicks fans do not need to fabricate vitriol. Wembanyama warrants the real stuff. He is not above the kinds of antics that draw ire. Like the way he shoved Jalen Brunson, who was trying to screen him, to the floor. Everyone saw him elbow the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Naz Reid and, if you believe social media lip readers, order the Spurs’ goons to goon.

Wembanyama is no wilting violet. And he did not come to warm hearts. He came to snatch chains off necks. He carries his own competitive zeal. He relishes the smoke. He has instigated animosity.

The Knicks are two wins from their first championship since the internet was called Arpanet.

In Game 3, it dawned on their fans that losing was possible.

Because standing on the other side of their team was not merely another superstar but a 7-foot-4 obstacle in the way of a championship they feel they deserve most.

Wembanyama presented himself as a viable destructor of dreams. He stepped into the most electric, frenetic, combustible, chaotic, expensive crowd New York could throw at him. It didn’t faze him. It settled him. The noise and chaos provoked the calm and clarity he needed.

“At home,” Wembanyama explained, ”it really feels like playing six against five. Here it feels like five against six.” 

He smiled. Because Wembanyama likes that: the harder road. He is one of those players who converts hostility into energy. He finds his peace in the middle of storms. Adversity channels his chi. He understands greatness to be hard. He knows that conquering the N.B.A. requires all of him. So these overwhelming situations he keeps finding himself in, these pressurized settings and high-stakes moments, remind him of the path he is on and how much he prepared.

So before the opening tip, when the first game of this series at Madison Square Garden had the crowd frothing, when the attendance of President Trump added a historic intensity and political angst to the setting, Wembanyama’s teammates knew. They could see his composure. They witnessed the absence of awe or eagerness.

And when he started the game with back-to-back dunks, converting the yells of the crowd into gasps, the Spurs knew their superstar was on business.

Knicks fans knew, too, judging by how the Garden, at times ready to explode, wound up filled with an ominous silence after whatever jaw-dropping thing Wemby did.

In Game 2, he had experienced the heartbreak of superstardom.

With his critical turnover and missed game-winner, he got a dose of life as culprit instead of hero. And like those cut from otherworldly fabric, he responded with a rebuttal performance.

“I would say it’s the way that everybody would think a great player would react,” Spurs point guard De’Aaron Fox said. “Obviously, he was upset with himself.

It’s not even, like I said, about the missed shots. He would get on himself more about the turnover at the end of the game.

Those things happen.

“There was definitely no inkling that I thought he wouldn’t come out here and respond the way that he did.” Wembanyama has been good for one of these eye-popping performances in every series.

But he looked passive, tired, a lesser version of himself, in the first two games in San Antonio.

Coming off the seven-game series with the Oklahoma City Thunder, there were questions about whether he would have enough to pull off something special.

But Madison Square Garden brings it out of the great ones.

With San Antonio on the ropes, Wembanyama orchestrated one of those performances. The Knicks are still in good shape being at home. But the Spurs are now one monster game from leveling this series. Wembanyama has filled Gotham with dread as it imagines the doom of an epic Knicks collapse.

Downright villainous.