You are, of course, allowed to roll your eyes at the prospect of reading yet another profile of a celebrity NBA fan. And especially a celebrity New York Knicks fan.
In contrast, I will now fanboy my socks off because Edie freaking Falco is on the phone.
The four-time Emmy Award-winning actress — the fierce co-star of the seminal HBO series “The Sopranos” with the late, great James Gandolfini, and who went on to more acclaim as the star of the Showtime series “Nurse Jackie” — is, like many fellow Gothamites, in total thrall these days.
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The Knicks are two games away from the NBA championship that has eluded the franchise since 1973. And Falco is over the moon with the team she fell in love with at the start of the 2000s — the Latrell Sprewell and Marcus Camby teams, with a dash of Steve Novak thrown in — as she watched them at Madison Square Garden.
“I’m a little embarrassed at my positivity and joie de vivre,” she says. “Not being the winning team is kind of built into the Knicks’ sauce. You say you’re a Knicks fan, and people are like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ It’s like a joke. But it’s never really mattered to me ’cause I just love ’em. I love the Knicks, and I love being at the Garden, even though the individuals are different every year. So, this is some whole other place. This is some whole other thing. It’s intense.
“I don’t know where to put this. It’s a little bit like everybody is focused now on my guys. But they’re my guys! I’m feeling sort of very possessive about my team. Like, the whole freaking world is focused on them right now, and I’m like, ‘Back off, everybody. These are my guys.’”
Falco, who recently starred in Paramount’s “Mayor of Kingstown,” is well aware that other Knicks fans have been at this longer. Spike Lee, of course, is the ultimate and most famous Knicks fan of this generation, having worked his way down from the blue seats at the top of the Garden as a kid in the 1970s to his courtside perch, his season tickets well earned and his celebrity/infamy to opposing teams’ fans well documented.
These days, the likes of Timothée Chalamet, Ben Stiller, Tracy Morgan and Fat Joe get the quality (read: free) premium seats. Even Falco is on the waiting list for NBA Finals tickets at the Garden, which are being sold at throat-closing prices on the open market. So, if she doesn’t make it in for games 3 and 4 against the San Antonio Spurs this week, she’s content to scream at the TV, with her pretzels and water at her side — her only sort-of superstition.
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The next game is her priority.
“I am working in Pittsburgh a lot these days, so I am being the good soldier,” she says. “I am going to work. (But) I’ve told everybody else, if my time on-set starts to look like it’s going to cut into the game, at the hotel, I just said to them, ‘I just want you to know, I’m gonna leave.’ I don’t want to be disrespectful, and I’m always a good employee.
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“But I feel like, at this point in my life, I have my priorities. So I have to be in front of a TV when the game starts.”
Falco isn’t some Jackie-come-lately to the Association. Her hoops fandom dates back to the Bad Boys Detroit Pistons.
“Well, I was dating a guy who was a Pistons fan,” she clarifies. “That was kind of my introduction to basketball. He was really a die-hard fan. And so we spent a lot of time watching basketball, and I kind of felt myself getting into it. His enthusiasm was contagious. And Isiah (Thomas) was phenomenal back in the day — a little bit like (Jalen) Brunson; not a huge guy, but able to do amazing things.”
But her passion for the game was turbocharged after she was cast as Carmela Soprano.
The HBO megahit, which won 21 Emmys during its run (1999-2007), led to all manner of perks. One day, someone simply announced to Falco that she could take a free trip to the Caribbean. Among another batch of unique benefits to Sopranodom were tickets to the Garden. (Falco paid it forward by taking part in the Knicks’ secret recruiting pitch to LeBron James in 2010, taping a tongue-in-cheek pitch to James with Gandolfini to come play for New York, reprising their roles as Tony and Carmela.)
“On a whim, I think it was — I actually don’t remember why I originally said yes,” she said. “I thought it would be fun. It really was the ‘Aha!’ moment, courtside, watching these players. I was, like, dumbstruck by how beautiful the game is, how giant these men are. And hearing the sneakers, and hearing them yell at each other.
“I don’t know. I was hooked pretty early on. It is completely, 100 percent like nothing else I’ve experienced.”
If Falco doesn’t take her boyfriend or her son as her plus-one to the Garden, she often sits with fellow actor Steve Schirripa, who played Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri on “The Sopranos” and went on to star in the police drama “Blue Bloods.” Schirripa’s love for the Knicks dates to when he had a student card to get into the Garden for $6 while at Brooklyn College in the late ’70s, when he played Division III basketball.
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“She’s a rabid fan,” Schirripa said by phone of Falco. “She knows the game. She was ecstatic against Philly (in the Eastern Conference semis). She was dancing during the timeouts, and you don’t ever see that. Very, very loyal and passionate. … Win or lose, she’s a real fan. She yells. She doesn’t scream like a maniac, but she voices her opinion. And she’s usually low-key.”
Getting locked into the Knicks has meant Falco has had to learn the pain true fans feel when the roster turns over year after year.
“I can’t say I’m there yet, but when each new year starts and you’re like, ‘They traded IQ (Immanuel Quickley)? And Donte (DiVincenzo)? Are you f—ing kidding me?’ You’ve got to talk to the fans before you do that,” she says.
“I took it really, really hard for a while. I thought I was making a point by not paying attention to the first few games of the season. I was boycotting. Nobody gave a s—. But every year, it took me a while to come around. Like, no, this is this year’s Knicks team. Invariably, you fall in love with this particular crowd, this particular alchemy, the relationships and all that stuff. It feels a little disloyal. Like, I feel like I should still be following Donte’s career, you know?”
Falco does a lot of plays in front of live audiences. There are similarities between actors having to perform on cue, she says, and athletes having to be at their best when the lights come on and 18,000 people are watching.
“You need a combination of laser focus and remaining open to what’s actually happening around you,” she says. “If you’re doing a play and you know the words, and you’re doing it, but if someone either messes up, or they’re in the wrong place on the stage, or there’s a sound in the audience, you need to be able to take that in, make a quick adjustment and then get back in the mode. And this is exactly what these guys do. You see this group in particular, our starters, but all of them, they are behaving like one person.”
She became a big Carmelo Anthony fan during his Knicks days. Their paths crossed over the years at fundraisers around the city — and later when Anthony was cast in an episode of “Nurse Jackie.” Here, though, the fan tables were turned, as Falco “kept making big circles” around Anthony as he did his scenes. It still happens when Falco is in proximity to the players — like when she did the “Roommates” podcast with Brunson and Josh Hart last year.
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“I got there early,” she said. “I walked around. I had to take deep breaths. I sat in the car, and then I got out, and then I got back in the car. I was like, ‘What are you doing, Falco? How many goddamned podcasts have you done?’ But I was a nervous wreck. I don’t feel this way about anybody. I’ve met everybody at this point that most people would be intimidated by. These guys kill me.”
It’s an odd alchemy in the Garden. The players’ fame is real, but so are so many of the people who sit and watch them. Every NBA team has a few celebrity fans, including the Spurs. But the Knicks’ star fan base is part of the nightly story at MSG. The players are locked into their jobs, but they notice.
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“I think before the national anthem of every game, I kind of take a couple of seconds and embrace the situation God put me in,” Hart said before Game 1 of the finals. “I’m blessed to go out here and play a game. In the big picture, this is a game, like I’ve gotten to do since I was a little kid, having fun with it. Just a blessing I think about every single game. It’s cool.”
So, what will Falco do if the Knicks actually finish this off with that elusive championship and hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy? She is … a little conflicted.
“Of course I want them to win,” she begins. “But I will be there at the beginning of next year, regardless. Whether or not they win this, regardless of who’s on the team. This is part of my life for so many reasons other than winning. And there’s something about — I’m reluctant to even say this. But let’s say they do win, and there’s going to be massive celebrations, where everybody feels like they can have a piece of my team. But also, it kind of lets the air out of the balloon that’s kept it so exciting for so many years. So, like, next year, what, we’ve got to win it again? You know what I mean? I don’t f—ing know. It’s not about winning for me. It’s almost like how I feel about these guys when they lose.
“I’ve talked to a couple of other women my age who are also Knicks fans. You do some maternal thing with these guys. You see them on the bench after missing a free throw or whatever, or they’ve lost the game. And your heart goes out to these kids. You just want to put your arms around these guys and go, ‘You did frigging great. And Wednesday, you’ve got another chance at it.’ That’s as much a part of the game for me as winning.”