NYC graffiti artists speak on their viral Knicks murals in wake of team's championship run

Danos once said, fine, I'll do it myself. And I feel like that was Jalen Brunson. When the game looked like it was not going to happen, he just put on his gauntlet, and he closed his fist. He said, fine, I'll do it myself. Brunson looks, Brunson drives, Brunson shoots, ties the game. I definitely believe it'll be a crazy moment for Joel Embiid for the rest of his life. My name is K-Swan. I'm from East Harlem. This is Mitchell Robinson dunking on Joel Embiid. I did the piece to capture the moment. When it happened, it immediately went viral. So I was like, this is this year's moment. The very next day, I saw people with t-shirts of the image, just a bunch of highlights. My group chat, we talking about it. I did it in maybe like four hours. Mitch saw it the very next day. Check out this new mural near MSG. Lifelong Knicks fan K-Swan paying tribute to Mitchell Robinson. Next thing you know, Robinson is there in person. He just so happened to be driving by, going to the game. He said, no way. That's what I saw him say. That's fire. That's what made it fire, this part right here. Oh, yeah, bad ass, nigga. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know that, you know that. That's what made it so fire, he had to make that shirt. Bad ass. Yeah, you know that. We're between 30th Street, 31st Street, and 8th Avenue, across the street from MSG. After we went to the Eastern Conference Finals, I was getting interviewed by someone, and I told them, when we win, we're going to come here and do this mural. This one is called the King of the East, and it's to commemorate Jalen Brunson being the top guard, being the king in the entire Eastern Conference Finals. The 2026 Eastern Conference Finals most valuable player, by unanimous decision, Jalen Brunson. Every team that the Knicks beat at Eastern Conference, I wanted to just depict them bowing down to the Knicks. For me, it just made sense to put Atlanta, Philly, Cleveland. I chose Maxie and Harden because those are the top guards. Those are the point guards for their respective team. And I know Trae Young ain't part of the Atlanta Hawks no more. He with the Wizards. But, you know, we got a saying in New York. Y'all know how that goes. Trae Young! I had to make that a part of it because, you know, it's part of the story. More people talk about that than anything else in the image. And I knew that was going to happen, so that's why he's there. First time I did it was actually on 33rd Street and 7th Avenue, right on the corner across the street from MSG. Took me three days to do. The very next day, it got taken down. The owner of the building, a 97-year-old man, great man, great positive energy. What he told me was, New York Knicks fans don't know how to act. So me putting it there, with people riding, climbing buildings, the art being right across the street, they just didn't want the, MSG didn't want the attention that it was going to bring. So that's why it had to get taken down. I mean, that's why I did it, bro. Like, you feel me? I'm trying to do this for the community. I want us to turn up. I want us to go crazy. Ain't no fan base like this. Like, it's just, it was a moment. And I'm trying to add to the moment. And we going to turn it up. It was probably best that it happened that way because it inspired me to do more work. I actually thought that one was better. It was cleaner. It was on a different surface. It's hard to do a gate. I'm not going to lie. This one is the one that's getting featured everywhere. This is also my baby. I added the New York Knicks with the Larry O'Brien trophy. When I completed this one, we had just won game two. I already knew we had it. I'm like, yo, yeah, we got the chip. I'm going to put the chip here. We're going to manifest it. And now that the art is here, I became a part of it. And it's something that I'll never forget. I go by Angelus the Artist. I'm a New York-based artist, street artist, muralist, musician. I've been painting murals for over a decade. The mural I painted was actually over here, right next to the green and black silhouette to the left of it. That's where I painted the Jalen Brunson mural. And if you look on the floor, you can still see the blue and orange. What inspired the whole mural pretty much was just the energy around the New York Knicks and around New York in general. I mean, you could feel the energy. As soon as they were winning, as soon as they beat the Hawks in that first series and they came back, it was just like, the energy just started escalating and getting bigger and bigger. And so by the time they got to the Spurs, I already knew I wanted to paint a Knicks mural. I was already seeing it. I felt it. I felt the energy. I was like, it's time. My idea was Jalen Brunson. I found the image of him holding the three out with his arm. But since I seen his arm out, I was like, man, this would be a great time to turn him into Thanos with the Thanos gauntlet because I do a series where I turn regular people into superheroes or supervillains. So that's how I came with that design. Thanos once said, fine, I'll do it myself. And I feel like that was Jalen Brunson. When the game looked like it was not gonna happen, he just put on his gauntlet and he closed his fist. He said, fine, I'll do it myself. But in this universe, in this multi-universe, Thanos won. I found out that they took down the mural through Instagram messages, through DMs. People were sending me pictures like, what's going on? This is crazy. What happened to the mural? And I was actually fishing. I was on a boat fishing and I'm looking at this and I'm like, this can't be real. So when I painted it, I thought it was gonna be at least the end of the summer, at minimum. But to have it come down in less than a month is crazy to me. And so I don't really know what it is, but I know the truth is that it's not here no more, unfortunately. But I will be making prints soon, so at least people can have a history of this mural that's here and they can have it on their wall. On the Loose is an extremely talented artist. The art was amazing. The affinity gauntlet, I tell them to put it back up. Find another location where you're not gonna have to deal with that same situation and put it back up. Or find a bigger location, put it back up and then add more to it just to show them you can't stop what's already in motion. The art is beautiful. The community deserves it. The community loves it. And at the same time, bro, dude, for me, we artists, we all tied in together. We all getting featured at the same time, doing everything together. The Knicks impact on the city is huge. I mean, I feel like this whole summer, New York is just winning this whole summer. It's just like a big blue and orange energy. You go to events, you go to parades or like big block parties or whatever, you see a lot of people. I've never seen it to where it's like that for eight blocks and then three avenues. That was insane. So it was a moment in time. And now that the art is here, I became a part of it and it's something that I'll never forget. I know all summer, you're gonna see more murals pop up and people think the energy died, but if artists continue to paint, the energy never dies. That's how it works.