A Knicks Fan Stole Jeremy Sochan’s Parade Sign. The Player’s Reaction Was Perfect.

New York City threw a parade on Thursday for the Knicks, who just wrapped up their first NBA championship in over 50 years. Mayor Zohran Mamdani was there. Alicia Keys sang. Ben Stiller and Timothee Chalamet posed for photos. And somewhere in the crowd, a fan grabbed a poster off a truck — a sign bearing the name of Knicks reserve forward Jeremy Sochan — and decided to post about it on X.

The original poster was part of the parade’s promotional material, one of those big signs mounted on the side of a vehicle. The guy who took it posted a photo, joking about his new souvenir. And then Sochan himself hopped on social media, quote-tweeted the post and just said: “Real.” That was it. Acknowledged. No drama. No anger. He basically endorsed the theft.

It’s worth remembering that Sochan’s path to that parade float was a weird one. He started the season with the San Antonio Spurs, the very team the Knicks just beat in five games to win the title. San Antonio released him earlier in the year, and New York picked him up as a depth piece. Sochan got spot minutes in the playoffs, mostly when Karl-Anthony Towns got into foul trouble, and he didn’t play huge minutes. But he still got a ring. And honestly, he would’ve gotten one either way — if the Spurs had won, he’d have been eligible as a former player who was on the roster earlier in the season. That’s some perfect-timing, no-lose scenario.

The Knicks’ championship run was dominant, but not perfectly smooth. They went 15-1 in the playoffs, but that one loss came early — they fell behind 2-1 in the first round against the Atlanta Hawks before rattling off four straight wins. After that, they swept the next two rounds and only dropped one game in the Finals. That loss came because the Spurs, young and reckless, made a lot of mistakes in the series, but the Knicks capitalized on almost all of them.

Now the focus shifts to something nobody has done in a while: repeat. The last team to win back-to-back titles was the 2017 and 2018 Golden State Warriors. Since then, no champion has even made it back to the Finals the following season. The Knicks have a target on their back and a roster that might look different by October.

But for one afternoon, with a stolen sign and a two-word tweet from a role player, the vibe was pure New York. A fan grabbed a souvenir. The guy on the sign gave it his blessing. And the Knicks got to celebrate something they hadn’t felt in 53 years.