There is something in the air in New York, and it’s orange and blue.

The city is crackling with a particular electricity that results only from the combination of excellent temperatures, a low dew point and a winning home team. Anecdotal evidence suggests that people have been warmer to one another in exchanges on the subway. Practically everywhere you look, there are small tributes to this year’s team and the prospect — stronger by the day — of its being the first set of Knicks to go all the way since John V. Lindsay was mayor.

But New Yorkers are not a monolith, and while some yell out “Let’s go Knicks!” at every given opportunity, others are impervious to the buzz.

Wednesday night, as much of the city was glued to their TVs for Game 1 of the N.B.A. finals, Yvette Romero went to see “Ragtime” on Broadway. On her walk home, she came across young people making “happy noises,” she said.

“I didn’t know what it was for, because I didn’t even know they were in the playoffs,” said Romero, a publishing industry retiree who was walking through Central Park on Thursday afternoon. “I don’t follow professional sports at all — nothing against basketball — so I did not know anything.”

Romero moved to New York in 1975 for “the culture, the museums and the theater, and things like that,” and has not been keeping tabs on the Knicks’ explosive sprint to the championship. Even when confronted with a crowd of euphoric Knicks fans, she came away confused.