The New York Liberty’s first-ever WNBA championship will be celebrated as only the Big Apple can with a ticker-tape parade this Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams announced.
Members of New York’s first championship professional basketball team in more than 50 years will be paraded down the Canyon of Heroes on Broadway in Lower Manhattan starting at 10 a.m. on Oct. 24, with the festivities concluding with a midday ceremony at City Hall.
The Liberty’s win is a historic moment in sports, as this is the team’s first WNBA title in its 28 years of shooting hoops.
“At a time when the rest of the country is finally acknowledging the endless talent in our WNBA, we are proud to have New York City bring home the trophy,” Adams said. “To our WNBA champions, thank you for being a role model to our city, and showcasing the values of grit, determination and hard work. Now, we can’t wait to celebrate off the court and throw you the parade you deserve down the Canyon of Heroes!”
In addition to a ticker-tape parade, which NYC has held for well over 100 years to honor athletes, politicians, military veterans and many other notable figures, local buildings will be aglow Monday night in the team’s signature seafoam green color.
The buildings to shine in celebration include City Hall, Brooklyn Borough Hall, the David N. Dinkins Manhattan Municipal Building, Queens Borough Hall and Staten Island Borough Hall.
‘Chasing this dream since 1997’
It was a long but victorious road for the Big Apple’s hometown team to reach number one. The athletes secured their third win to clinch the title after defeating the Minnesota Lynx in Game 5 of the WNBA finals.
“This moment means everything — not only to the Liberty organization, but to our fans and all of New York City,” Keia Clarke, CEO of the New York Liberty, said. “The Liberty have been chasing this dream since 1997 and after a strategic five-year turnaround, driven by ownership’s vision of rebuilding and regrowing this historic team, we are proud to get back to first and win this championship for New York.”
This year was a record-breaking one for the Liberty, clinching the overall number 1 seed in the WNBA Playoffs for a second time in franchise history, tying a franchise-best finish of 32-8, and becoming the first team in WNBA history with back-to-back 30+ win seasons, the mayor’s explained in a press release.
The greatest tribute NYC can provide
The Liberty is next in line of the city’s more than 200 ticker-tape parades in more than 100 years.
In a way, the team is going back to the celebration’s roots, when the first ticker-tape parade in NYC was held for another local icon with “Liberty” in her name — the Statue of Liberty.
The unique-style style of parade started when workers noticed that “ticker tape,” thin ribbons of paper traditionally used on machines to record telegraphed stock quotes, made an appealing cascading effect when thrown out of windows—similar to confetti.
“Contemporary accounts of the earliest ticker-tape parades describe the cascade of scrap paper as a spontaneous gesture on the part of spectators inspired by the festivities outside their windows,” the Alliance for Downtown New York notes on its website. “As the practice grew, city officials recognized the promotional value of ticker-tape parades and began to plan them as a function of municipal government.”
Ticker tape is obsolete today as financial information is transmitted in other technologically advanced ways, but the namesake parade lives on.
The New York Liberty joins a list of other sports icons who were honored with ticker tape in NYC, including the U.S. Olympic team in 1924, the New York Giants in 2008 and 2012, and the New York Yankees, most recently in 2009.
The Yankees, of course, are playing in the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers beginning this Friday night — so it’s possible there might be another ticker-tape parade not long after the Liberty get their well-deserved tribute.
