Knicks fan proposes to girlfriend at Thunder game

Even though there was no home field advantage, they still won.

Last Friday, die-hard Knicks fan Joseph DeSimone asked his girlfriend on Kiss Cam in Oklahoma City during an NBA heavyweight game against the Thunder. Erica Vann proposed.

The Lower East Side native made a bold move in enemy territory — taking a knee at the Paycom Center — and donned a Knicks jersey.

“I took a chance because I was probably going to get booed on the big screen when they saw my shirt,” DeSimone, 37, told The Washington Post.

“But the fans were cheering like the Thunder had hit a 3-pointer or just hit the winning shot. Even after the proposal, there was still so much love. People were walking by us saying, ‘Congratulations.'”

The couple, both U.S. Postal Service employees in Oklahoma City, met in 2023 after DeSimone moved there.

Vann, 33, had “no intention of dating” DeSimone when a co-worker suggested the Oklahoma native show him around.

But on their second trip, he took action.

“There was a booth and I was sitting on the same side as her,” he recalled. “She was kind of shocked and said, ‘Oh, I guess this is a date.'”

DeSimone bought the game tickets months before he planned to propose.

“I want to be in Oklahoma City and watch the Knicks play,” he said.

“Then one day it dawned on me, ‘You know this girl is really good for me. Let me see how I propose in the game.'”

Even though DeSimone asked about her ring size two months ago, Vann was still shocked — especially since things weren’t going well between them that night.

“We would actually be late and really angry with each other,” she recalls.

“So I drove fast,” DeSimone added. “She was a little upset with me and wanted to know why I was so insistent on getting there.”

The groom-to-be was nervous about bringing the radiant-cut sparkler in his pocket onto the stage, muttering to himself: “Please don’t walk away” as he walked through the metal detector.

So when security stopped him, he was even more stressed.

“I thought it was for the ring, but he asked me to take off the belt.”

The proposal happened at the end of the first quarter, after they kissed on the kiss camera, and Vann said, “It all happened so fast.”

“And I looked at him and the ring on the big screen and thought, ‘Oh my God.’ “I kept telling him, ‘I’m going to throw up,'” she said.

“I guess I just said, ‘Are you going to marry me or what?'” DeSimone recalled.

And she nodded. In the video, I tapped her arm because I was like, “Give me your finger.” “Because I can’t stay there that long.”