New York Knicks fans living in Houston will fill three separate venues on Saturday night as the team faces the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 of the NBA Finals with a chance to win its first championship since 1973. Anne Simsuangco, a Manhattan native who moved to Houston in 2017, organized the group after struggling to find watch parties during the 2025 playoffs. What started with roughly 20 people at Little Woodrow's in Sugar Land has swelled beyond 2,000 participants split across The Decoy in Memorial, Good Game Sports Club in The Heights and Luna in The Woodlands.
The growth tracks directly with the Knicks' run. Simsuangco's initial call on social media drew mostly neighborhood friends last spring. Thirteen months later the same network requires multiple bars and a separate event in San Antonio itself, where Simsuangco will co-host with local fans while her original members oversee the Houston sites. The group operates under the name Knicks Fans in Houston on social media and has coordinated with bar owners to dedicate entire nights to royal blue and orange.
That kind of organized support reflects how the Knicks' core has traveled. Jalen Brunson delivered 36 points in the Game 4 comeback victory that gave New York a 3-1 series lead, and the same players who once drew skepticism now pull transplants together across state lines. The fan base in Houston mirrors the team's identity: overlooked for years yet unwilling to scatter when opportunity arrives.
Houston's sixth-borough scene also fits a larger pattern for the franchise. Knicks supporters have long formed pockets in unexpected cities, but this group expanded fastest during the current playoff push. Simsuangco and her husband Michael now watch their three children join crowds that once fit in one neighborhood bar and now require three coordinated locations plus a road trip to enemy territory.
Game 5 tips off at 8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday at Frost Bank Center. A Knicks win ends the series on the road, a Spurs victory forces Game 6 back in New York. Simsuangco's decision to drive to San Antonio leaves the Houston operation in the hands of the members who first showed up last year, testing whether the network can sustain itself without its founder in the room.
The spread of Knicks bars across Houston underscores how close the franchise sits to ending a 53-year drought and how far its supporters will travel to witness it together.
Houston Rockets 
