Jovany Mujica of Merrick, Long Island, has tattoos of Darth Vader and an Aztec god. But with his favorite basketball team currently on a historically dominant playoff run, he felt something was missing from his pantheon: the New York Knicks logo.
“This is the time to do it,” Mujica said, settling into a reclining chair at a small tattoo studio on the edge of Manhattan’s Chinatown. “Time to pull the trigger.”
Tattoo artists across the city say they’ve been flooded with requests for Knicks tattoos since the start of the playoffs last month.
Some are getting full portraits of point guard Jalen Brunson. Others want the Statue of Liberty in a Knicks jersey.
The Knicks have not won an NBA title since 1973. In recent years the team has been more associated with infighting and terrible management than wins on the court. But this scrappy group of players has the city on the edge of a championship.
“It’s happening,” said Esteban Caasi, who runs this Elizabeth Street tattoo studio. “ People really have a lot of faith in the Knicks this year.”
Caasi said most of the Knicks tattoo requests he’s getting are for the classic logo, either in black and white or orange and blue.
Caasi shaved a spot on Mujica’s right calf and applied a stencil. Mujica said this year’s Knicks were a “team of destiny.”
Esteban Caasi tattooing Jovany Mujica.
He waxed poetic about the team’s idiosyncratic cast of characters as Caasi fired up his tattoo machine. There’s Brunson, “Captain Clutch,” the team leader. There’s 7-foot center Karl Anthony Towns, aka “Big Bodega KAT.” There’s OG Anunoby, who’s a defensive brick wall, and Josh Hart, who flies in for rebounds like a rocket-fueled energizer bunny.
Mujica said he finally decided to get the Knicks tattoo when the team came back from a 22-point deficit in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. The Cleveland Cavaliers even had a chance to win the game right before the buzzer — but the shot hit the rim and bounced out.
“It was like the basketball gods was like, ‘Yeah, no, this is the Knicks’ season. This is our year,’” Mujica said. He said after the game, he took out his phone and messaged Caasi on Instagram to book an appointment: “Time for that tat."
Not everyone needed playoff success to inspire their tattoos. Brooklyn artist and basketball podcaster Andrew Kuo said he got his two Knicks tattoos in 2012, in the midst of what he called the team’s “doldrums.”
Despite their overall lackluster performance at the time, that was the year an undrafted Harvard grad named Jeremy Lin came off the bench and caught fire, leading the team to win after win.
Andrew Kuo's tattoos.
“It changed my life,” Kuo said. “ I was kind of a down-on-my-luck sports fan, angry at the Knicks, angry at their decisions, and when ‘Linsanity’ happened it was such a beautiful moment, especially for a Taiwanese-American basketball fan.”
Kuo got “Linsanity” written on his arm in cursive. Then he got a grim reaper spinning a Knicks basketball, “to try to, like, exorcize the demons of championship hunting.”
Kuo said he loves that more people are now getting Knicks tattoos. Being a fan, he said, “is always a task of finding yourself in this sea of orange and blue.”
Back at the Chinatown studio Caasi finished up the final lines on Mujica’s tattoo and wiped away the extra ink. Mujica leapt up to see his new piece for the first time:
“ Oh, that's fire,” he said, posing in front of a full-length mirror. “Let's go Knicks, baby!”
The Knicks next game is Wednesday. They’ll face either the Oklahoma City Thunder or San Antonio Spurs — both highly rated Western Conference teams.
But Mujica said he’s sure the Knicks will win.
“This is our redemption story,” he said. “We're doing stuff that historically has never been done in the NBA. So let’s end it with the championship.”
