{"id":186268,"date":"2021-02-23T01:12:36","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T22:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/anthony-donahue-among-knicks-fans-returning-to-msg\/"},"modified":"2021-02-23T01:12:36","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T22:12:36","slug":"anthony-donahue-among-knicks-fans-returning-to-msg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/anthony-donahue-among-knicks-fans-returning-to-msg\/","title":{"rendered":"#Anthony Donahue among Knicks fans returning to MSG"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Anthony Donahue among Knicks fans returning to MSG<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Roughly 2,000 Knicks fans will be in attendance at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night for the first time in 352 days since the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown began last March, and an emotional Anthony Donahue will be among them.<\/p>\n

Donahue, a season-ticket holder for nearly 20 years and a hardcore Knicks fan since he was in fourth grade in 1994, suffered the loss of his 21-year-old sister Gianna Gregoire to brain cancer in August.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a long 11 months. For me personally it\u2019s been a long year and a half,\u201d the 37-year-old Donahue told The Post on Monday. \u201cDuring the whole season last year, it was one of the first years in my life where I didn\u2019t even care if the Knicks won or lost. I was still going to every game<\/a>, and going to the Garden was such a support system. It\u2019s going to be very emotional walking in that building on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been at almost every home game for the last 20 years, and I\u2019ve been going to games the last 26. I really don\u2019t know what to expect. But I am excited about being there and watching this team live, finally. It\u2019s my favorite place in the world, so it will be very emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Anthony
Anthony Donahue, sister Gianna Gregoire and Knicks announcer Mike Breen, at MSG before a game vs Boston on Dec. 1, 2019.
\n<\/figcaption>
Anthony Donahue<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The 37-year-old Donahue will attend Tuesday\u2019s game against Stephen Curry and the Warriors with close friend Elgin Swift. The 46-year-old Manhattan resident first met Donahue while donating items and services for a fundraiser auction on Gianna\u2019s behalf in 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was such a big part of Knicks nation, too,\u201d Donahue said of Gianna. \u201cShe had beaten brain cancer initially when she was 12, and she was my whole world. I raised her like a parent and took her to Knicks games since she was 4 years old. Everybody watched her grow up there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swift was furloughed from his job with Audi last March, and he now works as a wholesale director at a tech start-up called Rodo, an app<\/a> for selling and leasing cars online.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh man, it\u2019s been a dreadful year, sitting in the house every day, and even when I come into the office,\u201d Swift said. \u201cI work right across the street from the Garden at 1 Penn Plaza. I\u2019m looking at it right now. I\u2019m very excited to be going back, especially with Anthony. Combined with the fact that the team actually is enjoyable to watch again, makes it even better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Donahue and Swift believe the Knicks, 15-16 under first-year coach Tom Thibodeau, have been the type of hardworking, defense-oriented team New York fans already have embraced.<\/p>\n

\u201cI bleed orange and blue. I\u2019d be lying if I said it hasn\u2019t been a tough go for most of the last 20 years. But there\u2019s nothing like walking into the Garden when the team is competitive,\u201d Donahue said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can look forward to the games again. It\u2019s, \u2018All right, the Knicks play tonight, I\u2019m locked in. Don\u2019t bother me,\u2019 \u201d added Swift, who said his fandom dates back to \u201cMicheal Ray Richardson days\u201d in the early 1980s. \u201cIt\u2019s really been one of the more pleasant surprises in my years of being a fan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe expectations were not high. I thought they would be better, but they have played well above their heads. It\u2019s obviously a case of having a good coach, too. I think this is clearly where you look at someone who knows how to coach and how he wants to coach and getting the players to play the way he wants them to play. I think as New Yorkers we tend to admire effort, and that\u2019s how we define if we like you or get behind you. I think that\u2019s part of who they are and the coaching that [Thiibodeau] has instilled in them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The friends will be seated in Section 212 Tuesday night, not their regular seats closer to the court, due to the need for fans to be social<\/a>ly distanced throughout the lower and upper bowls due to COVID-19.<\/p>\n

On this night, however, location doesn\u2019t matter. They will be back in the building, the Knicks\u2019 first home game with fans since March 8 of last year against Detroit.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Anthony
Anthony Donahue (left) and Elgin Swift at a Knicks game last season.<\/figcaption>
Elgin Swift <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI think we are headed in the right direction, finally,\u201d said Donahue, a Bronx native who used to host a Knicks-based show for SNY. \u201cSo many times over the years, we\u2019ve tried to take shortcuts, and make crazy trades. But we\u2019re doing it the right way, finally.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said so many times over the last 20 years, if you put out a product that plays hard and competes, these fans will be fully behind that. I\u2019m really excited about this team and the way it plays. You\u2019d have the old-school signs with the \u2018D\u2019 and the \u2018Fence.\u2019 You\u2019d have \u201cdefense\u201d chants during the layup line with the way this team plays D.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know it doesn\u2019t happen overnight. It\u2019s not a championship team yet, but this is a team Knicks fans have been waiting for, for a long time. It\u2019s finally a team we can really get behind and it definitely will be nice to be a part of it again, inside the arena.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Anthony Donahue among Knicks fans returning to MSG” Roughly 2,000 Knicks fans will be in attendance at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night for the first time in 352 days since the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown began last March, and an emotional Anthony Donahue will be among them. Donahue, a season-ticket holder for nearly 20 years…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":186269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/02\/Anthony-Donahue-left-and-Elgin-Swift-at-a-Knicks-game-last-season..jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[94625,87892,72932],"class_list":["post-186268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-2-22-21","tag-madison-square-garden","tag-new-york-knicks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}