{"id":147,"date":"2026-05-21T21:40:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T21:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=147"},"modified":"2026-05-21T21:40:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T21:40:05","slug":"singing-the-knicks-praises-with-a-dash-of-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=147","title":{"rendered":"Singing the Knicks\u2019 Praises, with a Dash of Metal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Shortly before Game One of the Eastern Conference Finals, in which the New York Knicks hosted the Cleveland Cavaliers, Doug Berns, a thirty-eight-year-old musician who operates under the nom de plume DugLust, was popping in and out of crowded bars near Madison Square Garden, slapping backs and taking pics. Since 2024, Berns has been writing and recording musical recaps of every Knicks game\u2014part postmortems, part devotionals, part roasts\u2014and posting them online.<\/p>\n

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Berns, who was reared on the Upper West Side, has been a Knicks guy since he was five. \u201cI remember watching the \u201994 N.B.A. finals with my brother,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were supposed to go to bed, but my brother took this little battery-powered radio into our room and we listened to the end. That memory is foundational.\u201d At M.S.G., Berns, who has a flop of chin-length reddish-brown hair, was wearing an Offline Natives shirt featuring the Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson as a red-eyed demon. Berns went to high school (Dalton) and college (Columbia) in the city and never left. Although he plays bass in a handful of groups, including the Big Woozy Band, which does weddings and other events, he did not anticipate getting into the parody-song business, or becoming a mouthpiece for Knicks obsessives. Shit-talking has always been crucial to sports culture; Berns\u2019s version, in which he rewrites the lyrics to beloved pop songs as howling commentary about free throws, is more silly than caustic. \u201cYou can be honest about a poor performance without being hurtful,\u201d he said. \u201cI once told a player to use two hands to catch the ball. But he objectively wasn\u2019t. As fans, we have high expectations, we invest a lot, but these are also human beings who work so hard.\u201d He has become an unofficial team mascot\u2014a folk hero in a bespoke jersey and chain. His \u201cReturn of the Mack\u201d recap was featured on \u201cThe Roommates Show,\u201d a podcast co-hosted by the Knicks guards Josh Hart and Brunson. (Brunson called it \u201cfire.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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Berns does not stick to a single style; he has used tracks from ZZ Top, Shania Twain, Smashing Pumpkins, and Outkast as the basis of his recaps. His lyrics usually focus on particularly compelling bits of gameplay, but sometimes they take on a fan\u2019s desperation. \u201cWhy? Why can\u2019t the Knicks just beat the Lakers?\u201d he sang in March, over the chorus of Michael Jackson\u2019s \u201cHuman Nature.\u201d He said that, as a kid, he was \u201csickeningly obsessed with Iron Maiden.\u201d His original Knicks plan was to write a heavy-metal song about each game. The melodrama inherent to metal lends itself to the agony and ecstasy of fandom, but he realized that spoofing an existing track was both easier and more resonant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Knicks have not won an N.B.A. championship since 1973, and inside the Garden the pre-game atmosphere was vaguely tense. (Sports fandom can be rough on the spirit; \u201cshouting unheard advice in a crowd of unheard advisors,\u201d as Hunter S. Thompson once put it.) Berns got a Diet Pepsi and took his seat. He tries to limit his hollering to preserve his voice for the next morning\u2019s recording session.<\/p>\n

The first half of the game had its ups and downs. Then it was mostly downs. With less than eight minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Knicks were losing by twenty-two points. A few already heartbroken spectators began to leave. ESPN analytics had Cleveland\u2019s probability of winning at a grim 99.9 per cent. Berns got agitated when people in the stands started chiding a ref, chanting \u201cFuck Scott Foster!\u201d He grimaced. \u201cThey\u2019re fouling,\u201d he said. \u201cYou gotta hold your team accountable.\u201d (Earlier, he\u2019d posted a video honoring Foster; it was reposted by Ben Stiller, a courtside regular, who has also appeared in DugLust videos, playing guitar and drums.)<\/p>\n

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Suddenly, the Knicks turned it around, beginning the second-largest fourth-quarter comeback in the past thirty years, and sent the game into overtime. The energy in the Garden felt seismic, trembly. When the Knicks won, Berns was dazed. \u201cThat\u2019s the greatest basketball game I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d he said. He took a victory strut down Eighth Avenue, stopping to pose for selfies with fans.<\/p>\n

Around six-thirty the next morning, he got to work on his song\u2014a spoof of Chad Kroeger\u2019s \u201cHero,\u201d a bombastic hard-rocker from 2002\u2014at his home studio in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. He\u2019d been up until three, processing the win. \u201cJalen Brunson\u2019s the hero who saved us\u00a0\/\u00a0Hell no, we\u2019re not losing this game,\u201d he bellowed. The urgency of the enterprise keeps Berns from getting precious about the particulars, although he did spend some time perfecting the harmonies on the outro. When the track was finished, at around eleven, he started shooting video. His clips often feature multiple DugLusts, seemingly performing in tandem, an effect he achieves with the Draw Mask feature in Final Cut Pro. He climbed out onto his roof, dragging a tripod and two guitars, and carefully closed the screen so his cats wouldn\u2019t escape. He changed jerseys and sunglasses and angles.<\/p>\n

He posted the result around 1 P.M.<\/em>, to cascading likes and comments. The success of the entire project had left him emotional. \u201cYou can call me an influencer, you can call me a songwriter, you can call me Weird Al\u2014I don\u2019t give a shit,\u201d he said, his eyes wet. \u201cI just want to be creative. That\u2019s all I\u2019ve ever wanted.\u201d\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more The Fear Driving \u201cWell, I\u2019ll Let You Go\u201d and \u201cOthello\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doug Berns, a.k.a. DugLust, is a Knicks nut and a modern-day Weird Al, who counts Ben Stiller among his devotees. With the team in the playoffs, he\u2019s busy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fandom-dept"],"yoast_head":"\nSinging the Knicks\u2019 Praises, with a Dash of Metal - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=147\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Singing the Knicks\u2019 Praises, with a Dash of Metal - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Doug Berns, a.k.a. 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