** The people interviewed for this article have declined to share their first names, and the piece has been edited in accordance with their request. **


In the third week of June, two sports crowds in two different regions went viral for completely opposite reasons. In New York, the Knicks won their first NBA championship in 53 years, and the celebration that spilled into Times Square turned the city into a complete mayhem, arguably close to Gotham, a fictional city wrapped in chaos, in a movie the Dark Knight: five school buses were set on fire, five police cars were vandalized, and a 17-year-old bystander was shot in the foot, with 63 people arrested on charges ranging from assault on an officer to weapons possession. 


On the other hand, in Arlington, Texas, when Japan drew 2-2 against the Netherlands in their World Cup opener, Japanese fans did what they’ve done at every tournament since their first World Cup appearance in 1998: stayed in their seats after the final whistle to collect trash from the stadium before leaving. 


Many see the contrast as a manifestation of two different cultures of training. Some psychologists call it cultural display rules, norms learned early in life that govern how and whether emotions get shown depending on context. David Matsumoto, an author and psychologist, has found that people from collectivist cultures like Japan tend to regulate outward emotional expression to preserve group harmony, while people from individualist cultures like the United States lean toward unfiltered self-expression after directly comparing the US, Japan, South Korea, and Russia. 


The riots, in other words, are not about temperament, nor what jersey you put on to support. Rather, it’s about what gets reinforced starting in childhood. 


The signs were there: when the Knicks won, fans did give away: after Game 4, fans got into fistfights, climbed buildings, threw eggs at the Spurs’ players, and made numerous arrests, even before the championship was decided. Such incidents have repeated for decades across the country: Boston after Red Sox championships, Detroit after the 1984 Tigers, LA after the 2000 Lakers, and San Francisco after the 2014 Giants all produced similar scenes. The incident on Jun 13, 2026, was one passed down through repeated cultural exposure.


New York residents also had the expectation of collective chaos. “I expected the city to go crazy if we won that night,” said Lee, a 24-year-old NY resident, who was out with a friend that night. “NY people are genuinely crazy.” 


On the other hand, Shin, a 21-year-old NYU student, who watched the night unfold near his dorm, described the story from a different angle. He had seen the pre-game jokes online, but it wasn’t until she heard sirens and smelled smoke from outside that she began to think that the jokes might have some real merits. That moment, she said, was when it became clear that “something was going to happen.” 


Once things escalated, people climbed streetlights and storefronts, stomped on cars, and treated public property as their own to destroy. “Everybody saw it coming,” Shin said, suggesting that many other New York residents would share her observations that night. 


NYPD data shows gun arrests of people under 18 rose 136% between 2018 and 2024, with the number of identified youth shooting suspects up 92% and youth shooting victims up 81% over the same period. While this trend exists independently of sports culture, it reveals how the city has been shaped to normalize the kinds of behavior seen during the recent celebration. 


The night’s danger doesn’t seem to have been abstract to many in the crowd. Shim said that when a section of the celebration became too dense, he thought of the 2022 Itaewon crowd stampede in Seoul, during which 159 died after having been stampeded. She left the area immediately. 


Data suggest that Japanese fan behavior isn’t some innate national trait. Ultras Nippon, the main supporter group for Japan’s national team, is run by “capos” who choreograph chants and lead fan activities. Young fans are welcomed into this structure, and this creates an organized system of generous fan behavior. Many East Asian countries share Japan’s collectivist pattern, just like how destructive celebrations show up across plenty of individualist countries beyond the U.S. Instead of an America v.s. Japan issue, it arguably is a matter of which cultural training reaches the youth first.


By the time a fan is in their twenties, the training is already years deep. One version pushes them into violence, while the other produces service. In New York’s case, that training also collided with something that has nothing to do with sports at all: a rising number of teenagers carrying guns into the streets as a result of broader social trends, turning what should have been a celebration into a public safety hazard.