‘There will be history’: NYC is celebrating the Knicks with a ticker-tape extravaganza

New York is celebrating the Knicks in classic style Thursday, throwing a ticker-tape parade for the team that brought home the NBA championship longed for by generations of fans.The Knicks’ victory — after a 53-year drought — has electrified New Yorkers, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani has predicted that the parade might be one of the biggest in the city’s history.City police said all the viewing pens along the route were full less than three hours before the procession, packed by thousands of fans who flooded into the city.The mere fact that it’s happening is historic in itself. Although the Knicks won the championship twice in the 1970s, the city didn’t host a parade for them either time. Then-Mayor John Lindsay had cut down on ticker-tape extravaganzas for financial and other reasons, and he instead honored the Knicks at a 1970 reception at the mayoral mansion and a jampacked 1973 ceremony outside City Hall.This time, the city is going all out.“There will be performances, there will be New Yorkers, there will be the team and there will be history,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday.The parade is set to start at 10 a.m. Thursday near Battery Park and head up Broadway on the skyscraper-flanked route dubbed the “Canyon of Heroes.” The procession is to end at City Hall, where the players are to get another traditional tribute: keys to the city.Knicks legends Walt “Clyde” Frazier — a member of the ’70s champion teams — and Patrick Ewing are expected to participate in the parade, according to a person familiar with the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the details before they were publicly announced. The person said Mike Breen, the Knicks’ play-by-play announcer on MSG Network, was set to emcee the City Hall ceremony.Alicia Keys, the singer who collaborated with Jay-Z on the New York-loving 2009 hit “Empire State of Mind,” has been tapped to perform.“How could I not?&#