A Jamaican Knicks story 53 years in the making: From Patrick Ewing to Jalen Brunson

When over 3 million fans packed Lower Manhattan this week to watch the Knicks finally end a championship drought dating back to 1973, there was somewhere in New York a woman whose love for the team didn’t start with Jalen Brunson. It started in 1992, in a living room in New York, with her Aunty Joan.

“Upon arrival in 1992 for my Masters in Television Production at NYIT, my Aunty Joan quickly introduced me to Jamaican-born basketball superstar Patrick Ewing and the Knicks,” says Cathy Kleinhans, a Jamaica-born former Miss Jamaica (World) contestant and CEO of Jamroppo Productions, who has called New York home for over three decades.

“Aunty Joan would be cooking Sunday dinner, and all her children — including me — would gather in her famous living room for those Knicks games,” she told Caribbean National Weekly.

That living room became Cathy’s basketball classroom.

“John Starks for three from downtown. It’s an air ball. I learned about layups, driving to the basket, dunks — you name it. Fast lessons,” she recalled.

“When the team struggled, Aunty Joan had a saying for it — ‘Knicks run outta gas.’”

It was the era of giants — Ewing battling Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone, and Alonzo Mourning, with Anthony Mason and Charles Oakley bringing the muscle, Reggie Miller fueling the rivalry, and lifelong fan Spike Lee bringing the noise courtside.

“The famous MSG music taunt — DEFENSE!” Cathy remembers. “Not to mention Pat Riley. Who cut a better figure in his jacket and tie at MSG than Pat Riley?” she asked.

That core — Ewing, Starks, Mason, Oakley, and later Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell — gave everything from the mid-’80s into the early 2000s. They reached the Finals and won the city’s heart, but the NBA championship that began for her in Aunty Joan’s living room never came.

“I kept an eye on the Knicks over the years with the losses,” Cathy says. “Carmelo, then Jeremy Lin. Not to be,” she added.

Then, a few years ago, something changed.

“I watched a Knicks game and saw a young man with some of the fastest footwork I have ever seen,” Cathy recalls.

“I discovered Jalen ‘Captain Clutch’ Brunson,” she said.

Digging deeper, she found the connection that would close a loop she didn’t even know was open. Brunson’s father had played for the Knicks and is now an assistant coach with the team — and his maternal grandparents are Jamaicans, from St Ann and Mandeville.

“So from Ewing to Brunson, the Knicks Jamaican baton was passed on. And of course, Patrick Ewing is still with the Knicks organization. How cool is that?” she asked.

When the parade finally came, it ran straight through Cathy’s own history.

“The entire parade route was my old stomping grounds,” she says — the Municipal Building where she interned at WNYC, the Brooklyn Bridge she walked back and forth in every kind of weather, and City Hall Park where men played chess all day in what she calls “the oasis in the concrete… all before 9/11. A bygone era.”

She remembers J&R World, the electronics store that filled a city block; Century 21, her Aunty Joan’s favorite, navigated through every entrance and exit before and after 9/11; the Law & Order shoots near Chambers Street; and Pace University at the foot of the bridge, where she later earned a second master’s as a NYC Teaching Fellow.

“How fitting that the Knicks win and that part of Broadway is now named Champions Way,” Cathy says.

“Full circle — my old stomping grounds where I was a quick study,” she recalled.

That phrase — quick study — runs through everything. The intern who became a producer and director for Video Music Box. The young woman who saw her name scroll in broadcast credits, courtesy of hip-hop video pioneer Ralph McDaniels, and felt Alicia Keys’ “concrete jungle where dreams are made of” become real. And there, in the parade crowd decades later: Mary J. Blige — an artist Cathy once watched perform at one of McDaniels’ legendary parties, with Knicks players in the room and Anthony Mason nearby.

“To see Marisa, Mary J., Spike Lee, knowing my Aunty Joan was out on Broadway watching her favorite do-or-die Knicks,” Cathy says, “my heart was full and grateful to witness such joy in NYC.”

As New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani handed over the keys to the team that finally finished what Ewing’s generation started, Cathy had her own line on it: “From my Aunt Joany to Ewing to Brunson — it’s a full Jamaican connection.”

Alicia Keys belted out “New York, New York” at the celebration. Cathy was ready for it.

“I too can join Keys. Yeah!”