The Mecca of Basketball is buzzing again. After clinching their first home playoff series since 1999, the New York Knicks are just four wins away from a long-awaited trip to the NBA Finals

Months after the WNBA's Liberty won their first-ever title, the NBA's Knicks have snapped a decades-long Eastern Conference Finals drought to move within four wins of a Finals appearance and eight wins of a title. Fans in the Mecca of basketball have responded accordingly.

The last time the Knicks won a championship was 1973. The last time they even made it to the finals was 1999. But honestly, that appearance shouldn’t count. ’99 was a lockout season — it was the first time the NBA ever lost games to a labor dispute (and the year the league’s locked-out stars played a pay-per-view exhibition game that famously showed most of them completely out of shape) — and only 50 regular-season games took place.