Knicks Chesterson will be watching her namesake team in the Eastern Conference playoffs — unless the games start after her 7:30 bedtime.
“I think the Knicks are going to win five [games] against the Pistons and the Celtics, and . . . Daddy didn’t tell me the rest,” said the 7-year-old superfan, whose father named her for his beloved basketball team.
“I want them to win the championship, because none of them are better than the Knicks,” she added.
Her father, Corin, recalled getting the initial “crazy idea” to name her after one of his favorite players when his wife, Molly, was pregnant.
“My wife would go down the rosters of all-time Knicks and every day she would tell me a different name and nothing really stuck,” said the 36-year-old New Rochelle native.
“Until I said to her one day, ‘How about just ‘Knicks?’
“She didn’t say ‘no,’ which was awesome.”
When the couple shared the name with their families, they “didn’t believe us at first,” recalled Corin, who worked part-time for the Knicks until a decade ago.
“I was having them guess the name. . . . And then when I said, ‘Knicks,’ my sister’s face kind of dropped.”
The father-daughter duo became basketball royalty after they were featured in an MSG commercial, part of the network’s “Expression of Fandom” campaign, which won a New York Emmy. It’ll play again during the playoffs, which begin Saturday at 6 pm with the Knicks taking on the Detroit Pistons at Madison Square Garden.
Fans who recognize the pair from TV frequently stop them.
“We were at her first-grade basketball game and a dad came up to me and said he recognized us from the commercial and they had just had a newborn baby, and they actually named her middle name Knicks,” Corin said.
“Spelled differently, I think they do it ‘Nix.’”
Knicks, who plays guard on her elementary school’s team, which Corin coaches, went to her first Knickerbockers game in March 2021, when they defeated the Bucks 102-96.
“It was fun because the Knicks won,” she said.
Knicks is the oldest of four girls, and all of her sisters have basketball-themed names as well.
“But they’re not named after a team, they’re named for a player,” said Knicks. “I like it, because they’re all really cute.”
Scottie, 5, was named after Chicago Bulls star Scottie Pippen; Coby, 3, after the late Lakers legend Kobe Bryant; and 1-year-old Noa, after Joakim Noah, who played for both the Knicks and the Bulls.
Corin, who just moved his family back to New York after a stint in Chicago, explained the meaning behind each of their monikers.
“Scottie was born in Chicago. Coby was born, unfortunately, after Kobe Bryant’s passing. And then Joakim Noah obviously played for the Knicks and the Bulls, so there’s that New York and Chicago connection.”
Knicks — whose favorite players are Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges — listed more than one reason why her name is a slam dunk.
“It’s unique,” she said. “And I get to wear clothes with my name on it.”
