Big Apple Knicks fans are getting creative, coming up with ridiculous schemes to cancel work Thursday for the NBA Champions’ Valley of the Champions ticker show.
Some will call in sick, others won’t show up to work and hope for the best, while others hope their bosses will understand – but they won’t miss the huge celebrations of their city’s heroes.
“I’ll start coughing on Wednesday, and I’ll have a fever next,” Kenny Rosa, a TV studio technician, said Monday. “As soon as I got off work, I would call the next day and call in sick.”
“It’s a mental health day,” Yale club worker Sam Suarez said. “It’s a mental health day, and you’ve had sick days, and you call and say, ‘Hey, listen. I have to go.’ And that’s it.
“You know, sometimes you don’t have to explain, because in a lie, they can find out.”
Justin, a New Jersey native, said he snuck into the city for the big show after quitting his job in Seattle. He told his superiors: “I’m not feeling well and I’ll come back when I feel better.”
Mayor Zahran Mamdani said the Knicks’ victory parade could be the largest in the city’s history, a can’t-miss affair for die-hard fans who watched their hometown team win its first NBA title in 53 years.
A Game 5 victory over the hated San Antonio Spurs on Saturday night launched the city into a massive celebration that has yet to subside — and will culminate in a parade on Thursday.
For long-suffering fans, it may be worth risking your job.
“I respectfully call,” one Harlem fan told The Post.
When asked what he would tell his boss, he said: “My dog got sick.”
Another Knicks fan said he planned to use a ruse that has worked in the past, saying he would “deliberately make me fall in front of my bosses” and claiming the “injury” would keep him home.
Long Island sanitation worker David Bologna had another plan in mind.
“I told him I had a doctor’s appointment,” he said. “He didn’t seem too happy about it, but he accepted it.”
However, quite a few fans said they would be honest about the whole thing and hope for the best.
“Everyone knows, and I think the employer shows that,” said David Dweck, a lifelong fan. “This is what it is. We live in New York and we love the Knicks….We’re calling for a layoff and that’s what it is.
“I say I’m coming to the show,” Dweck added. “I love the Knicks and I’m going to suffer the consequences in a while.”