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5 people beat the odds and now have their very own NYC Knicks trash bins
By
Apolline Lamy
and
Louis C. Hochman
Published Jul 24, 2026
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Apolline Lamy / Gothamist
By
Apolline Lamy
and
Louis C. Hochman
Published Jul 24, 2026
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The chances of winning a blue and orange trash can were lower than the chances of winning the NBA Championship.
But on Friday, five lucky New Yorkers took home the same sort of 30-pound, blue and orange trash cans New York City put on its street corners to celebrate the Knicks’ historic, first-in-a-half-century championship run. They won the cans in a raffle where more than 125,000 people submitted entries through an online form from June 26 through July 3, the Department of Sanitation said.
Five winners out of 125,000 entries amounts to .004% odds. Playbooks at the beginning of their season predicted the Knicks’ odds of going all the way at about 10%.
Kevin Manzanares, 24, an analyst at Bank of America, saw the contest on Instagram and told his four siblings to sign up. His sister, Gabriela Manzanares, won the trash can, but couldn’t pick it up, so Kevin did the honors in an event at Manhattan District 4’s garage on 57th Street.
He lives on the Upper East Side and grew up in the South Bronx, and plans to keep his eye on the rare collectible bin.
“So I'm gonna have to visit her more often than I have been before, and then I gotta see the basket,” he said.
The baskets are about 28 inches tall with a 21.5-inch diameter at the top, according to the sanitation department. The sides of the bins bear the city's usual warning of a $100 fine for household trash — but the department can probably let it slip in this case.
Daniel LeVert, 27, who came to New York four years ago, could not believe that he actually won.
“There was a split second where I was like, ‘Is this a scam?’ And then I was like, ‘Oh my God. I'm like 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' It's like my golden ticket to, like, to the trash can,” he said.
LeVert took the trash can with him on the subway, riding the Q and J trains back to his home in Bed-Stuy, but covered his new prize with trash bags to hide it from others.
Mia Manantan, 39, said she came to New York City from Los Angeles right around the Knicks' run in 1999. She’s a big fan of Patrick Ewing, Allan Houston and Larry Johnson.
“It was really cool to see that energy recreated in 2026 years later, as I'm an adult now. You don't really notice these things when you're a kid,” she said. “I guess your fandom is shaped by the people around you. And seeing here all these folks were there for '99, there for 2026, they're still the same, same age as me, maybe older, maybe younger.”
City officials say the five winners came by their cans the right way. But during the Knicks’ championship parade on June 18, Angie Baez, an executive director at JPMorgan, dumped one of the iconic streetside trashcans on the street and dragged it away. Videos of the incident and Baez with the bin in the subway went viral. She was reportedly fired and city officials say she was fined, but the bin was returned.
Smaller, 15-inch versions of the trash cans are also available to buy from the sanitation department in a collaboration with clothing brand OnlyNY, for $168. They’ll ship in November.
Tagged
accountability
new york city
new york knicks
sanitation
sports
Apolline Lamy
Apolline Lamy is a reporting intern on the Day-of Desk. She is studying for her master's degree from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
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Louis C. Hochman
After about two decades in (mostly) New Jersey-focused commercial print, digital and digital-but-radio-adjacent news, Lou stumbled into member-supported news in early 2021, as the editor and CEO of Montclair Local. There, he (hopes he) expanded enterprise, brought more sophistication to digital storytelling and moved the nonprofit newsroom closer to long-term financial sustainability. He helped lead the Local to its fourth consecutive General Excellence award from the New Jersey Press Association — the NJPA's highest honor with judges noting the paper's work to strip away layers of government opacity, to hold power to account, to make news accessible for more members of the community, to share the stories and concerns of more facets of the community and to tell compelling stories across multiple media. He's excited to continue the same ethic — news as a public service — at NYPR as the New Jersey and suburbs editor, drawing on the extraordinary talents of reporters including Karen Yi and Nancy Solomon. Lou lives in Philly (that commute!) with his partner and their two cats, about whom and about which he speaks incessantly.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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