Why Die-Hard Lakers Fan O’Shea Jackson Jr. Is Rooting for the Knicks to Win an NBA Title This Season

O'Shea Jackson Jr. sent a voice text to the show's group chat the night the Knicks beat the Cavaliers in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. The voice text was two words.

Bing bong.

The room had to explain it to Rich, who, despite being a longtime New Yorker, had never been on the subway and did not know the audible. Bing bong is the announcement chime that plays when subway car doors are about to close. Knicks fans adopted it as their celebration sound roughly three years ago.

Jackson, a lifelong Angeleno, had picked it up. He had picked up other things too.

"Yeah, bro. I'm walking here," he said on the show, demonstrating his new New York vocabulary. He attributed the line to its proper source, the famously ad-libbed Dustin Hoffman moment from Midnight Cowboy where Hoffman, in character on a real Manhattan street, nearly got hit by a real car.

The bigger question Rich wanted answered was the actual headline. Why is a die-hard Lakers fan publicly rooting for the New York Knicks to win the NBA championship?

Jackson laid out the case methodically.

The Knicks have two former Lakers on the roster. Josh Hart and Jordan Clarkson, in Jackson's framing, are the Kobe Kids he grew up watching. He loves them. Mike Brown used to coach the Lakers. Phil Jackson and Mark Jackson both spent meaningful time in Los Angeles. The combination of overlapping personnel adds up, in Jackson's mind, to a legitimate fandom transfer.

Then the negative case. The Lakers are not in this conversation anymore. The Spurs are the team that helped knock the Lakers out, so they are out. The Thunder are out as the active obstacle. The Cavaliers are out by process of elimination.

"I want the Knicks to win the championship," Jackson said. "Not only is it something that I would like to see in my lifetime, but it would be incredible what those fans would do. They would be the most annoying thing I've ever seen in my life. I want to see it."

The room turned on Rich.

"Root for the meteor, man," he said.

Jackson refused.

"That's Celtic propaganda, and I will not stand for it," he said.

The cast then pivoted to a separate Jackson story from his recent flight, where Delta had bumped him from his usual front-cabin seat to economy row 36F. Jackson described the experience with the genuine distress of a person who had never previously sat behind row five.

"They put me back in 36F," Jackson said. "Imagine the row number that you were in was something lower than a five. Bro, that was crazy. They closed the curtain on me. The vents don't work. People was gambling."

He claimed a small victory. The woman next to him told him after landing he had handled the trial well.

"You were a star of the people," Rich said.

Then the cast tried to convince Rich he needs a pair of Timberlands. They proposed a complete New York starter kit for him: Tims, a chop cheese, a Triple Fat Goose jacket. Rich confessed to having owned the boots.

The room let him keep the Knicks fandom, conditionally. Bing bong stays.