The Knicks got their hero’s welcome at Thursday’s ticker-tape parade. But for 12-year-old Kaitlyn Rosa, her Canyon of Heroes-like moment had come a week before the playoffs, when Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso hosted a “Welcome Back to Brooklyn” event for Knicks guard Jose Alvarado.
While Alvarado isn’t the biggest name on the roster (if memes and jersey sales are any indication, that’s clearly Jalen Brunson), he is the only native New Yorker on the team. Alvarado was born in Brooklyn and played high school hoops in Queens. He’s now also the favorite player of Kaitlyn, a member of the Raccoons, a youth basketball program for Spanish-speaking immigrant children and children of immigrants based in Corona. As Epicenter NYC has reported, part of the Raccoons Basketball’s accessibility comes from its lower cost compared with many youth basketball programs outside school.
The enthusiasm extends well beyond one player. Youth sports leaders in Queens told Epicenter NYC that the Knicks’ championship run has energized both their program participants and their parents. Families who rarely watched basketball are tuning in together. Kids are copying moves from their No. 1 players. And for many young New Yorkers from immigrant families, the success of players like Alvarado and Karl-Anthony Towns has become proof that someone from their hometown or community can reach the sport’s biggest stage.
Alvarado, daughters and mothers
Beyond the hometown connection, Alvarado’s Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage inspires Kaitlyn “to believe that if she sets her mind to it, her dreams will come true,” her mother, Maribel Juarez, said in Spanish in an interview. With the Knicks’ comeback wins this season, Kaitlyn, like many young female fans, found her visions of the WNBA feeling closer. To borrow a Spanish turn of phrase — cuando los planes se vuelven planeta — they felt less like distant planets and more like concrete plans.
“I see myself playing in a championship someday,” Juarez recalled Kaitlyn saying, “just like them.”
Like Alvarado, a bench player throughout the Knicks’ championship run, Kaitlyn has spent the past couple of months mostly supporting her teammates. Knee and ankle injuries have sidelined her, but she has not missed practice. Though Kaitlyn has been frustrated at times after the highs of cheering crowds and three-pointers, Juarez said, “I told her, in order to make it happen, she has to keep fighting.”
The sport is personal for her mother, who played college basketball in Mexico. Her brother did, too. After moving to New York, the siblings spent weekends playing together until a wrist injury forced Juarez to stop. Kaitlyn grew up around those games and started playing at age 5.
Meeting Alvarado at the homecoming event was also a turning point for another Raccoons player, 13-year-old Sophia Barrios. While Jalen Brunson is Sophia’s favorite player, it’s Alvarado’s advice that has stayed with her since April, when the typically shy teenager asked him how to reach the WNBA.
“He told her never to be defeated, that people will always talk, but she has to prove them wrong — she always has to keep improving,” said her mother, Melyssa Aldana. “That’s something that really stuck with her and made a big impression on her.”
Sophia had been following the Knicks for two years and even turned her parents into fans. They have been watching games with her since last season.
“How they play, how they communicate with each other — I love to watch stuff like that,” Sophia said. “No ball hoggers. I love how they all get a chance to shoot, show the coach what they have.”
Athletes and their mentors
Lorena Valero, program director of Raccoons Basketball, said she and her colleagues knew a Knicks championship would be “a huge boost” for kids in their program, many of whom now see the team’s players as role models.
“Like, ‘I want to be like Brunson.’ ‘I want to be like Alvarado.’ ‘I want to get to that level,’” Valero said. Recently, the kids had taken to ending practice in a hands-in huddle where they shouted, “Knicks in 4!”
Valero said the NBA playoffs have also brought families together. Some parents told her it was the first time they had watched an entire basketball game with their children.
It’s an effect being felt across youth basketball in the city. Steve Espaillat recently watched two young players recreate a moment Knicks fans know well, mimicking OG Anunoby’s putback in Game 4 of the NBA Finals.
“That was once in a lifetime,” said Espaillat, president and co-founder of Iconic Sports Lab, a youth development nonprofit using sports to build leadership and expand opportunity for underserved youth. “But that’s an inspiring, iconic moment for the kid that you reach them on a different level, like, ‘I can do this too.’”
Espaillat is not immune to the Knicks craze. The Dominican American gave Karl-Anthony Towns a shoutout for representing the Dominican Republic. And Espaillat, who grew up playing basketball at Park of the Americas in Corona, Queens, soaked up the Knicks’ playoff run.
“We’re all connected to it somehow,” Espaillat said. “We all have a story about the Knicks, we all have something that brings something like a light out that maybe wasn’t there before. You’ve seen kids wearing Brunson T-shirts, or just even taking a basketball and shooting it in the rim, something that they never tried before. They’re experimenting. That’s the beauty of sports.”
