The Knicks were supposed to throw a party Monday night. Instead, the scene outside Bryant Park turned into shoving matches, thrown glass, and a line of NYPD officers with pepper spray. And the wildest part? A lot of the chaos broke out before the game on the screen even ended.
This was Game 3 of the 2026 NBA Finals, the first time the Knicks had played a home Finals game in 27 years. The energy in Midtown was already cranked up to ten. Then came the fights, the police line, and a crowd that chased a man in Spurs gear through the streets after the final buzzer. Here is how a celebration turned into a mess that had a city councilmember publicly questioning the police.
Why the party got moved to Bryant Park in the first place
Normally the big watch party happens right outside Madison Square Garden. Not this time. President Donald Trump planned to attend Game 3 in person, and the Secret Service was not about to let thousands of unscreened fans gather on the Garden’s doorstep. So the NYPD and Secret Service shut down the usual gathering and the city scrambled to find new spots.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Bryant Park as a last-minute addition. It was free and open to the public, capped at 5,000 people, with registration required to get in. The city also pointed fans to Wollman Rink in Central Park and Brooklyn Bowl in Williamsburg. A security perimeter went up around the Garden running from West 30th Street to West 35th Street, between Sixth and Eighth Avenues, with whole streets closed to traffic starting at 4 p.m.
Fans climbed cars and scaffolds to avoid the rules
Here is where it gets a little ridiculous. To actually get inside the Bryant Park watch party, you had to register and follow the rules: no bags, no smoking, no alcohol. A lot of fans did not want any part of that. So instead of going in, they jammed the streets outside along 42nd and 40th Streets, climbing on top of cars and scaffolding to catch a glimpse of the screen inside.
Picture a crowd packed shoulder to shoulder, people perched on scaffolds, others standing on car roofs, all trying to watch a game they could have seen for free if they had just signed up. That kind of setup was a problem waiting to happen, and it did not take long.
The brawl and the pepper spray
Things turned fast. Fights broke out in the crowd, and the NYPD moved in. Video from streamer Oliya Scootercaster, who posts as @ScooterCasterNY on X, showed a brawl erupting with officers deploying pepper spray to push people back. In the footage, you can see an officer spraying rowdy fans as the crowd surges.
The thing that confused everyone watching online was the timing. The fighting started well before the game ended, while the Knicks were still very much in it. One person on social media summed up the confusion perfectly: “The Knicks are 2-0 and looked good? What’s the brawl about?” There was no obvious trigger. The crowd was already taunting the security detail before anyone threw a punch.
Thrown glass and an injured officer
A law enforcement official confirmed the NYPD made multiple arrests at Bryant Park after people in the crowd started fighting, throwing glass, and climbing structures. One officer got hit by a thrown glass bottle and was injured. Arrests came down for disorderly conduct and assault on officers.
It was not immediately clear how many people were taken in or how many were hurt by the end of the night. What was clear is that the new location did nothing to calm things down. If anything, the half-in, half-out setup, with thousands of people stuck outside the gates, made the whole thing harder to control.
The crowd chased a Spurs fan and ripped off his jersey
After the game, the action spilled out into Midtown. A reporter on the ground watched hundreds of people chase a social media streamer who was wearing Spurs gear. They cornered him near West 36th Street, tore his jersey right off his back, and he barely escaped into a nearby building.
From there the crowd flooded the surrounding streets, slapping the sides of vehicles and surrounding cars that were stuck in traffic. Thousands of fans poured into the area around the Garden too. The whole zone turned into a sea of people, frustrated by the loss and looking for somewhere to put that energy.
A councilmember called the police response “overly aggressive”
Not everyone blamed the fans. City Councilmember Justin E. Sanchez put out a statement shortly after the game saying footage of officers managing the crowd looked “overly aggressive.” So now you have the two sides you would expect: cops dealing with thrown bottles and people climbing scaffolds, and critics saying the response went too far.
One fan online called it before it happened, joking that if the Knicks win the series there will be mayhem from idiot fans, and if they lose there will be mayhem from the cops. Game 3 managed to deliver a little of both before the series was even decided.
This was not the first rough night of the series
Monday was bad, but Friday’s Game 2 watch party outside the Garden was arguably worse by the numbers. Police arrested 26 people that night. Of those, 17 were arrested and charged, while nine got criminal court summonses for disorderly conduct and were released. An officer was injured then too.
Police also grabbed several people for selling fake merch, and one of them was hit with an extra charge for having a loaded firearm. The NYPD even had an internal assessment warning of a heightened risk of trouble tied to these high-profile games. Commissioner Jessica Tisch had flat-out warned fans to behave better this week. That message clearly did not land.
Trump got booed louder than the Spurs
Inside the Garden, the man whose visit caused all the security headaches got a New York welcome. Trump attended Game 3 and was booed heartily during the national anthem. The boos for him were actually louder than the boos for the Spurs players when they came onto the court, which is saying something at a Knicks home game. Tickets were not cheap either. The lowest price on TickPick on Sunday morning was listed at $8,282.
Trump, for his part, had said of the team: “The Knicks have really, they’ve really suffered for years.” He left the city after the game.
The game itself snapped a 13-game streak
Oh right, there was basketball. The Spurs beat the Knicks 115-111, ending New York’s 13-game postseason win streak. It was their first loss since April 23. The Knicks actually looked great early, dropping 42 points in the second quarter to take a 64-57 halftime lead, but they could not hold it.
Jalen Brunson scored 32 and OG Anunoby added 28. On the other side, Victor Wembanyama put up his most complete game of the Finals with 32 points, and De’Aaron Fox iced it with a clutch pull-up jumper in the final seconds. Karl-Anthony Towns had summed up the mood before the game when he said, “Hope has been brought back to the city, but the word success hasn’t been seen.”
What happens next
Even with the loss, the Knicks still lead the series 2-1. Game 4 is set for Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. ET back at the Garden. With Trump gone, the NYPD said the usual watch parties outside Madison Square Garden are expected to resume.
Most fans just wanted to be near the action. Brandon Rivera, who got shut out of Bryant Park and ended up watching from outside a bar, put it simply: “The vibes and the energy to the game, like the fans, is what makes the game fun.” Vendor Mario Briggs, selling homemade drinks called nutcrackers near the Garden, agreed: “Ain’t nothing like New York energy.” The trick now is keeping that energy on the right side of the police line for the rest of the series.