{"id":1988485,"date":"2026-06-13T18:33:56","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T15:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1988485"},"modified":"2026-06-13T18:33:56","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T15:33:56","slug":"how-a-knicks-fans-throwaway-larry-david-joke-became-a-defining-meme-of-the-nba-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1988485","title":{"rendered":"How a Knicks fan\u2019s \u2018throwaway\u2019 Larry David joke became a defining meme of the NBA Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Alex Jakubowski watched the New York Knicks erase another San Antonio Spurs lead Wednesday night, cherished the historic 29-point comeback<\/a> victory and then climbed into bed. Before Jakubowski fell asleep, a joke about the game popped into his head. He typed it into his phone and shared it on X.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old Knicks fan from Hartford, Conn., initially thought the post was a \u201cthrowaway tweet.\u201d But the joke \u2014 a riff on the NBA Finals matchup written in the voice of a \u201cSeinfeld\u201d joke, accompanied by a courtside photo of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David together at Game 4 \u2014 resonated far beyond the walls of Jakubowski\u2019s bedroom.<\/p>\n

\n

The Spurs know how to TAKE the lead, they just don’t know how to HOLD the lead. And that’s really the most important part of the lead: the holding pic.twitter.com\/3JABgJ7DFt<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Alex (@ajak1033) June 11, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

By the time Jakubowski woke up Thursday morning, his post had been viewed more than 600,000 times on X and had already spread across other social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Reddit. His \u201cthrowaway\u201d joke was well on its way to becoming one of the defining memes of the 2026 NBA Finals.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post sounded like the kind of conversation that Seinfeld would have had on his eponymous 1990s sitcom with the character George Costanza, who was based on \u201cSeinfeld\u201d co-creator David. Or like the kind of observation David would have made on his HBO comedy series, \u201cCurb Your Enthusiasm.\u201d Paired with the image of the two famous New York comedians, the post was perfectly timed to go viral.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

{“endpoint”:”https:\/\/api-prd-nyt.theathletic.com\/graphql”}<\/p>\n

Family and friends reached out to Jakubowski as the post spread. The nonprofit employee even took breaks from work on Thursday to keep up with the buzz.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey see my name and they\u2019re like, \u2018Holy crap, that\u2019s Alex,\u2019\u201d Jakubowski told The Athletic<\/i>.<\/p>\n

As of Saturday afternoon, Jakubowski\u2019s post had accrued 8.7 million views on X. He had 660 followers before Game 4, and now he has more than 1,750.<\/p>\n

Jakubowski said he watched \u201cCurb Your Enthusiasm\u201d during halftime of Game 4 because the Knicks were trailing by 27 points. He considers himself \u201cone of the biggest \u2018Seinfeld\u2019 and \u2018Curb Your Enthusiasm\u2019 fans in the world,\u201d he said, and watches the shows every day.<\/p>\n

\n

When David appeared on \u201cThe Rich Eisen Show\u201d on Friday, Eisen asked him about the viral post.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw that,\u201d David said<\/a>. \u201cI love that. I thought that was so funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

David\u2019s response was short, but it brought Jakubowski joy \u2014 enough to share the video on X with a post saying that David\u2019s acknowledgment left him feeling \u201cspeechless.\u201d That video had 1.4 million views as of Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s my hero, and to see him acknowledge me was just pure joy,\u201d Jakubowski said. \u201cIt was just unbelievable. \u2026 Never in a million years would I have thought that Larry David would see something that I wrote and that any of this would ever happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alex Jakubowski watched the New York Knicks erase another San Antonio Spurs lead Wednesday night, cherished the historic 29-point comeback victory and then climbed into bed. Before Jakubowski fell asleep, a joke about the game popped into his head. He typed it into his phone and shared it on X. The 23-year-old Knicks fan from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1988485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1988485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1988485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1988485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1988485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}