Bronx-native, Greg Armstrong, 62, traces his Knicks fandom back to 1973, the same year the team last won a championship.
Now living in Middletown, NY, he’s in his 34th year as a season ticket holder.
He told The Post that his earliest memories go back to watching games on Channel 9 with his older brother, a Clyde Frazier fan, whose posters covered their bedroom walls.
That lifelong obsession hasn’t been cheap.
Armstrong said his full-season tickets started at about $2,000 years ago. The upcoming season is costing him $10,000 before playoff tickets.
Between the regular season and postseason, he estimated he spent roughly $20,000 this past season alone.
Still, he insists the price has been worth it.
Over the years, Armstrong has seen the heated Knicks rivalries of the 1990s, two Finals runs, Patrick Ewing in his prime, John Starks’ famous dunk, Larry Johnson’s four-point play and the 1994 Finals game forever tied to the O.J. Simpson chase.
He’s brought his sons to games, had player interactions, received gifts through the season-ticket experience and built friendships in the seats around him, including with one fan who has sat in front of him for all 34 years.
In 1999, Armstrong waited outside Madison Square Garden for nine hours for the chance to buy Eastern Conference Finals tickets.
Today, his Knicks collection includes everything from a signed photo with Willis Reed and a piece of the 1969-70 championship court signed by Reed and Frazier to other jerseys and basketballs from Knicks legends
The 62-year-old said he’s not especially superstitious, but he does own enough Knicks gear to rotate outfits at games and make the fandom visible every time he shows up.
When the Knicks made the Finals this year, Armstrong watched at home, screamed, yelled, and even got teary-eyed. If they win the title, he said, it would be “the most special moment” of his life outside of the birth of his children.
“I’ve been waiting my entire life to experience this,” he told The Post. “I’ve needed this to happen before I leave this earth.”
Chris Shammas shares Armstrong’s intense passion.
His devotion to the team he has been waiting his whole life to see win the championship again even has its own shrine — that he calls the Knicks Nook.
The nook has, more accurately, now become something of an apartment.
And his home is bulging with iconic pieces from decades of fandom, including old Garden seating, signed floor pieces, game-worn items, autographed balls and photos.
It’s even, he told The Post, “been featured in an MSG commercial.”
The centerpiece is a pair of Garden chairs that were actually his family’s old seats — used from 1986 until the arena renovations began in 2011.
When they were being sold off, Shammas pushed to track down the exact ones.
“I didn’t want something that looked like them; I wanted the real thing or not at all,” he said.
After initially being told it couldn’t be done, he said the Garden called two weeks later with a surprise: they had found a way.
“I cherish them and can’t let them go,” he said.
There are plenty of other treasures in the room, too, from Red Holzman and Willis Reed pieces to Bernard King, Patrick Ewing, John Starks and Jalen Brunson memorabilia.
The space is mostly where Shammas watches with friends when he’s not at the Garden.
And while he doesn’t have one strict lucky outfit, a bad loss can still send some gear into temporary retirement.
“I definitely will put something on the shelf for a bit if they lose while wearing something,” he said.
Shammas is hardly alone in turning Knicks loyalty into something you can measure in years, dollars, and square footage.
Bobby DeSantis, 23, a New York City resident, was drawn to the Knicks through his dad, with the team becoming something they could watch, debate, and bond over.
He said his first real glimpse of a good New York basketball team came during the “Knickstape” era of Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire, J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert and company.
DeSantis still has the Carmelo Anthony jersey he wore as a kid, along with Obi Toppin and RJ Barrett jerseys and a few Knicks shirts he’s received through his Instagram page.
His collection is smaller than Armstrong and Shammas’, for cost reasons, but “[It] makes the Knicks gear I do have that much more important to me,” he said.
DeSantis told The Post that he tries to watch all 82 regular-season games when he can.
“They give me something to look forward to in order to get through the day, so I try to tune in every chance I can,” he told The Post.
Unlike other superfans, Tanya Mykhaylyuk, 38, didn’t inherit Knicks fandom from birth.
She moved to New York from Ukraine 20 years ago, started watching more games, and realized the Knicks were “much more than a basketball team” and “part of the city’s identity.”
Eventually, she created the fan page @theknicksgirl, spending years posting anonymously while building a community of fellow fans.
Now that the Knicks are in the Finals, she said she’s finally ready to publicly reveal herself.
“It feels like the perfect moment to celebrate both the team and the amazing fan community that has become such a big part of my life,” she said to The Post.
Mykhaylyuk has hosted watch parties in her building’s resident lounge, with earlier gatherings ranging from intimate groups to crowds of more than 100.
“Once the game starts, it honestly feels like a little Madison Square Garden away from Madison Square Garden,” she said.
Jenn and Jazz Gordon, sisters and lifelong New Yorkers, have gone so far as to turn their personal Knicks obsession into OmniFan, the community they founded together around watch parties, player events, and shared game-day experiences.
Their love of the team started with father-daughter trips to Madison Square Garden and the 1990s teams that made guys like Patrick Ewing, John Starks, and Larry Johnson permanent fixtures in their Knicks memories.
And on nights when they weren’t going to the game, their family still found ways to get close to the team.
After their schoolwork was completed, their mom would help them make the late trip back into Manhattan so they could wait outside afterward and try to spot players leaving the arena.
“The takeaway for us now, looking back as adults, is that our mom was the real MVP,” they said.
Years later, through OmniFan, the sisters have hosted former Knicks guard Chris Childs, one of their childhood favorites, and crossed paths with Allan Houston, another player tied to their early years as fans.
For them, the Finals run has made the city feel more connected than ever, and their casual bar meetups have become a much larger fan operation, with events at spots including Mustang Harry’s, Hill Country Barbecue, and Hard Rock Cafe Times Square.
The sisters also have a years-in-the-making scrapbook of Knicks photos, autographs, newspaper clippings, memories, and old ticket stubs, which they’ve called “a snapshot of our entire journey as fans.”
Now, watching the city rally around the team, they love the new camaraderie.
“Strangers are talking to each other. New friendships are forming. Communities are connecting,” they told The Post.
Another lifelong superfan, Juan, 40, told The Post, “Knicks fans are obsessed because we’ve gone most, if not our whole lives, without seeing the Knicks win a championship.”
“All of this energy and madness that you’re seeing has been building up for decades. That and New Yorkers in general, we tend to be a bit unhinged.”
Born and raised in Flushing, Queens, he became a Knicks fan because of his father, a Patrick Ewing diehard.
He still has NBA trading cards that his father bought him in the 1990s. But for Juan, fashion is his way of expressing his love.
And once the game starts, he mostly avoids people, with one exception: his dad, who is usually texting with him through the madness.
He’s also enjoying watching Jalen Brunson lead the franchise almost three decades after seeing his father, Rick Brunson, play as part of the Knicks team that fell to the Spurs in the 1999 NBA Finals.
“The son is in a position to avenge the father,” Juan said. “This is a story made for a Hollywood film. All it needs is the right ending.”
And New York’s superfans to carry them through.
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