'Go NY Go': Behind the song pumping up the Knicks' Garden - ESPN

As Joel Embiid's desperation 3-pointer clanged off the rim and the buzzer sounded in Game 2 of the first-round series April 22, thousands of New York Knicks fans at Madison Square Garden screamed with glee. At the same moment, Dan Monopoli — the in-house DJ — got a cue from his boss, the arena's legendary organist and music director Ray Castoldi.

«He just said, 'Now! 'Go NY Go,' and I felt the hair stand up on my neck,» Monopoli recalled. «I was like, 'Oh my god, this place is going to melt.' And it did.

»There's still nothing like it."

He wasn't exaggerating. The Knicks, who beat Philly in six games, are one win from eliminating Indiana and clinching their first trip to the Eastern Conference finals since 2000, and there is no denying that the song underpinning it all isn't some new rap hit or club anthem, and it isn't some underground or on-the-cusp track that's about to get huge. It is «Go NY Go,» a simply named, easy-to-follow pop/hip-hop amalgam first played to a middling reaction in 1993.

Is it strange that Jalen Brunson's wife, Ali Marks, captioned her celebratory Instagram story after the Knicks closed out the Sixers with «Go New York Go New York Go?» Maybe. But if it seems impossible to you that a basketball team based in the cultural capital of the world still gets its biggest rise from a song originally recorded in a Manhattan apartment closet more than three decades ago by a guy who would go on to become more famous as an entrepreneur than a musician (and who actually now owns a piece of a different NBA team), well… maybe you should stop and listen to the thing again.

«There are lots of songs you can use to hype up the crowd,» Monopoli said, «House of Pain, Zombie Nation, things like that — and we use those.