4-1.

I heard the Knicks victory before any announcement. The whole city was screaming. In my case, the screaming was from an apartment across the hall and in the building next door, not the entire city block, but still. Plenty enough to hear. Then I saw the announcements and the victory posts, many of which were about victory celebrations. I had a few minutes of thinking I was tired, then decided: now or never.

Two blocks is enough to muffle a lot of sound, believe me. The screaming around me had died down fast, and two blocks over, the partying was still going. It was nothing compared to some of the more heavily attended areas - in my neighborhood, there were a handful of bars and a lot of people at home watching TV, rather than a lot of people at bars and a handful at home, so there weren't traffic cones being worn as hats or people jumping onto street signs. There were, however, fireworks.

Not huge Fourth of July shows, no. But fireworks just the same. I'd heard someone talking about them and knew I had to see for myself. I wandered into cheering and clapping and clapped along for a while, happy to be part of a crowd where everyone was there for the same reason, thinking if I'd missed fireworks that being there was still good.

I hadn't missed them. I might have if I'd left two minutes earlier, but I was in the right spot in the crowd to be standing next to someone setting them off. They didn't go up that high, and they didn't light up the whole sky, but they were blazing up into the night and leaving trails of sharp smoke, yellow and red and green, beautiful high-speed sounds followed by the little booms.

I've seen pictures of other parties. They looked suitably epic. However, I wouldn't have stood right next to the fireworks at those, so I wouldn't say I missed out on anything.