New York City is not really a sports town, per se. We have too much other stuff going on, and our allegiances are divided between two teams in most sports (plus whatever teams our bevy of transplants are rooting for). In other cities when a big sportsball event is happening, it's immediately apparent—city buses are decorated, stores are decked out in gear, local easy-listening radio stations change their names temporarily to pay tribute to their teams. Not New York City, though, and that's totally fine. We keep it moving.
There are two exceptions to this, however—whenever there is a Subway World Series, which improbably enough occurred in 2000, during which New York became a beautiful baseball-crazed, pulsing city, where no one talked about anything else for a week. The second? Whenever the New York Knicks go deep into the playoffs.