The NYPD nearly rained on the New York Knicks’ victory parade when officers almost tackled guard Tyler Kolek.
The fan-favorite player, 25, was running along the Manhattan parade route Thursday and high-fiving fans while holding a beer in one hand when two police officers grabbed him and stopped him, appearing to mistake him for a fan who had hopped the barricade, as seen in a video shared first by ESPN’s Kimberley A. Martin.
Kolek briefly stopped as the officers appeared to point him to the exit, but they backed off once the crowd began to boo and yelled that he was a member of the NBA championship-winning team.
He looked annoyed as he ran away from the police, but later joked about the incident in a post on X, writing: “I swear I’m on the team bro.”
Although Kolek helped to defeat San Antonio Spurs in the midseason tournament in December, he did not play in any of the 2026 NBA Finals games, which saw the Knicks beat the Spurs in five games to nab their first championship in 53 years.
He was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers in the 2024 NBA Draft and was immediately traded to the Knicks. Kolek spent the entire 2024-25 season with the Knicks’ G-league affiliate team, the Westchester Knicks.
Kolek was just one of the players who was honored during Thursday’s first-ever ticker-tape parade, which saw more than one million attendees celebrating the historic win with blue and orange gear, rally towels and handwritten signs.
Fans camped out overnight and arrived hours early to the parade, which started at 10 a.m. Viewing areas opened at 6 a.m., and fans climbed trees and crowded onto sidewalks before the NYPD announced that all viewing pens were full at just 7:30 a.m, leading people to be turned away from the massive event.
The parade started in Battery Park and traveled down to City Hall, where the team was awarded the keys to the city.
“The Knicks did not just win for New York City — they won like New York City,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said during the ceremony speech.
“What is New York if not your back up against the wall, a dream that feels just out of reach, a rent payment you don’t know how you will ever make? What is New York if not 99.6 percent of the world stacked against you? And who are New Yorkers if not people who hear those odds and smile? Who look at a 0.4 percent chance of success and ask: ‘why’re you giving me a head start?’”
Mamdani added: “This is our city. This is our team. For 53 years, we watched. For 53 years, we waited. Now, we’ve won.”