Susan said she clicked the camera on her Meta glasses to take a quick picture of a Spurs fan in a Tim Duncan jersey — a small, proud act she expected to be harmless on a trip she had long looked forward to.
Moments earlier, she and her husband Chris say they had been verbally harassed by a group of men who, Susan said, were “I guess, Knicks fans,” and who taunted them in Spanish, circled their seats and chanted, “Knicks in 4, Knicks in 4,” while the couple were wearing Yankees gear at the Yankees–Red Sox game on Monday night.
“We were verbally harassed by a group of men who were, I guess, Knicks fans, and they looked at us, and they were speaking in Spanish in a mocking tone,” Susan said. “They started circling us and saying, Knicks in 4, Knicks in 4.” Chris and Susan stressed they were not wearing anything that referenced the Spurs; they were “actually wearing Yankees gear.”
The couple’s account arrived amid a swell of viral videos circulating on social media showing attacks on Spurs fans after the team’s win in New York Monday night. That wider stream of clips is the backdrop to why Chris and Susan — who said they were warned before leaving San Antonio not to wear Spurs gear — felt the tension escalate from words to fear.
Susan, who lived in New York for 14 years before the trip, said she had packed Victor Wembanyama jerseys anyway because “this is a big deal and so what? I’m just as crazy. New York made me that way.” Still, she said, they understood the danger: “We knew not wearing our jerseys was a wise choice.” The couple described a scene that turned from excited to claustrophobic as they tried to find a place to watch the Spurs game afterward.
They went to Bryant Park for a watch party only to find the space already at capacity. Susan said “the vibe in the air felt dangerous and that a group of younger people seemed to be looking for trouble.” Bars nearby were packed, the couple said, so they returned to their hotel. On the walk back, they spotted a man in a Tim Duncan jersey heading toward the crowded park; Susan said she “took a quick picture of him just cause I was proud of him,” using the recording feature on her Meta glasses.
Chris recalled the moment he saw the fan and felt alarm: “I’m like, ‘oh my gosh, there comes this guy wearing this jersey,’” he said. “He zoomed past us, and he was heading toward Bryant Park, and I was like, I kind of felt sorry for him because he was headed into a hornet’s nest.” The next day the couple said they saw the same man in a Tim Duncan jersey in a social media video.
The friction at the center of their story is sharp and specific: the couple say they were targeted even though they were not wearing Spurs apparel, undercutting the simple assumption that only visible Spurs fans were at risk. That detail makes their account less a dispute over fandom than an example, they say, of how hostility spilled into a larger, more volatile city scene on Monday night.
Chris and Susan’s choice to photograph a fellow Spurs supporter and then to leave the packed watch party underscores how ordinary decisions — wearing a jersey, pausing to take a picture, trying one more bar — turned into a judgement call about safety. They returned to their hotel without seeing any confrontation escalate to physical violence, but the couple’s unease did not end there.
The most consequential unanswered question remains: who were the men who circled them, and will anyone try to identify them or press a complaint? The couple said they saw a Spurs-clad man in a later social video, but whether that clip or other footage will lead to identification or any official action is not clear. For now, Chris and Susan’s trip home will be measured as much by what they filmed and what they feared as by the games they came to see.
