It’s Christmas in June.
Thousands of pounds of tiny white confetti shreds will rain down on the city as the champion New York Knicks parade through lower Manhattan for the biggest ticker-tape parade in Big Apple history.
A whopping 1.25 tons of confetti will be tossed onto the Canyon of Heroes in the Knicks’ honor — which is a quarter more of the paper than what was dumped for the New York Liberty’s parade two years ago.
The Downtown Alliance ordered the extra paper shreds — equal in weight to a Honda Civic — after taking note of just how massive watch parties across the five boroughs had grown during the nail-biting NBA Finals.
“In every neighborhood of the city, neighbors were standing shoulder to shoulder, hugging strangers — it was something to behold,” said Jessica Lappin, the alliance’s president. “We expect that same kind of turnout on Thursday.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the Thursday parade after the Knicks’ historic victory over the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday, leaving the Downtown Alliance just five days to secure the colossal amount of confetti.
But Lappin and her team were already on the case.
The crew started making plans to order the party paper as early as Game 3 of the finals — even though it was the only game of the series that the Knicks lost.
“This was a team of destiny, so we had some faith,” Lappin told The Post.
The alliance secured 2,500 pounds of the crinkled packing paper from a ULINE packaging facility, upping the order by 500 pounds since the New York Liberty women’s basketball team stormed the corridor in 2024.
Lappin’s team upped the order after Mamdani teased Monday that the celebration could be “the largest parade in New York City history.”
Other famous Big Apple parades drew around 4 million attendees — including for the Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969, astronaut John Glenn in 1962, Gen. Douglas MacArthur after his dismissal by Harry Truman in 1951, and Charles Lindbergh in 1927 after his famed flight.
An estimated 3.5 million people attend the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade each year.
“The pent-up energy and demand for the Knicks is something I’ve never seen as a lifelong New Yorker,” said Lappin, referring to the swarms of fans that flooded the streets, bars and restaurants for every playoff game.
The difference between the watch parties and the parade, however, should be how Knicks fans behave themselves.
More than 60 people were arrested, four were stabbed and one person was shot after the team secured its victory — and a fleet of school buses was torn to shreds and ignited in Times Square.
“We hope and urge all the folks who come to be kind, to be safe and to be respectful,” Lappin said. “This is a time for us all to celebrate. There’s no need for violence, but let’s have the New York spirit that this day deserves.”
The confetti will be white rather than the Knicks’ signature orange and blue, simply because that is traditionally what is ordered for the champion’s parades, according to the alliance.
Bags of paper have already been delivered to some of the Broadway buildings, which will toss them from the roofs and front their front doors.
The alliance has also upped the number of cleanup crews since Liberty’s 2024 parade — their fleet of 60 workers will aid the Department of Sanitation in clearing the 1.25 tons of paper in the immediate aftermath, as well as the following days.