LA-based New Yorker Maxwell Adler is suffering from serious FOMO. So he called up fellow Knicks fans, famous and otherwise, to talk about the historic Game 4 and the cost of getting in.
Image may contain Mariska Hargitay OG Anunoby Adult Person Hugging Face Head Clothing and CoatMariska Hargitay hugging New York Knicks forward OG Anunoby following their historic Game 3 victory in the NBA finals.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images
Call a New Yorker—any New Yorker—and ask them how things are going. They’ll all tell you the same thing, even the Staten Islanders and people from New Jersey who claim the city as their own, as if everyone there has slipped into some kind of Pluribus hive mind: We’ve got Knicks fever. And there ain’t no prescription for this disease.
But, if you’re a Knicks fan living outside the city right now, the FOMO is almost unbearable. Because this is more than just a playoff run. It’s one of those rare cultural moments New Yorkers will still be talking about 30 years from now.
“I wish you were here for the playoffs” my Uncle Jeff wrote me in a text message. “It’s electric here.”
Yeah, me too, Uncle Jeff. Me too.
Since I couldn’t be at the historic Game 4 victory over the San Antonio Spurs at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday, I’ve spent today trying to piece together what it actually felt like inside the arena and out on the streets of New York. I’ve been calling friends, family, and the celebrities who have taken on the role of Knicks mascots to talk about how they gained entry into the world’s most famous arena, how much they paid for tickets and what it was like once they were there.
Jake Shane— born and raised in Manhattan— was sitting in a box with Alix Earle and Hailey Bieber when the Knicks clawed their way back from 29 points down. “It felt like I was witnessing history,” Shane told me, recalling how even the ushers and concession workers stopped what they were doing to watch the comeback. By the time OG Anunoby hit the dagger with 1.2 seconds left in the game, Shane said he “fell to the damn floor,” overcome by the delirium spreading through the arena and eventually out into the streets of Manhattan, where “every single person” seemed to be living through the exact same moment at once.
Mariska Hargitay was seated courtside for Game 4 alongside Taylor Swift and two of the HAIM sisters—who were all wearing custom Knicks shirts designed by Alana Haim featuring musician-themed puns like “Steve Knicks” and “Knickelback.” She said the madness at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday hardly felt real. “The best part of the videos and memes from last night is that I can say, ‘THAT REALLY HAPPENED!! And I was there!’ I don’t know if I’d believe it if I didn’t have proof.” Hargitay wrote to me. For her, the comeback transcended basketball entirely. “Last night wasn’t about basketball. It wasn’t even about sports. It was about life—and what it means to do battle for your dream,” Hargitay said.
DJ and New York-native Samantha Ronson flew to San Antonio for Game 1 with her brother—producer and lifelong Knicks obsessive—Mark Ronson. “I don’t have kids, I haven’t been married,” she told me. “It was the best night of my life.” Then came Game 4 at Madison Square Garden, where the Knicks came back from what felt like a “400-point” deficit, according to Ronson. “If you’re a Knicks fan, nothing matters till the fourth quarter,” she said. “You don’t leave.” By the final minutes, Ronson said people around her were crying, and she had forgotten to breathe. “Of course I believed it,” she said. “Because it’s the Knicks.”
Ronson says she and her friend, Christine Taylor— who has been at several of the Knicks playoff games with her husband, Knicks die hard fan Ben Stiller—were getting superstitious before Game 4, texting each about which exact outfits they should wear. “We were just like, what did you wear to Game 1? Okay, wear that again,” Ronson said. “I wore the same vintage T-shirt in San Antonio for the game on Friday, and I wore the same shirt last night. But I didn’t wear it Monday—that’s my bad. It’s my fault we lost.”
For those who don’t have the celebrity hookup for tickets, there’s a lot of psychological math that goes into deciding whether to buy or sell your Finals tickets. My friend Christian Saccomano did the calculus and unloaded his seats for Game 3 for $15,000—not because he didn’t want to be there, but because he wanted to watch in a bar with the real Knicks fans. By his logic, the Garden had become too expensive and too chaotic with all the security measures put in place to accommodate President Trump’s appearance on Monday night. So he cashed out, then rerouted part of the windfall into flying his friends in from Los Angeles so they could all be together in New York for Game 5.
“Being able to experience these games with friends is better than going to MSG and not being with the people that I’ve watched this team alongside all year long,” says Saccomano. One of the people Saccomano is flying in for game 5 is Sawyer Turcotte, who is from Rye, NY. “Watching the Knicks and the city’s response to their run this post season is the first time I’m like ‘I miss New York,’” Turcotte told me.
Roy Nimron was the most hardcore Knicks fan in my grade at Jericho High School on Long Island. When Roy was ten years old, he wasn’t only talking about Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. He was evangelizing the greatness of Doug Christie, the defense-first fourth or fifth option on those early 2000s Sacramento Kings teams that never even made the Finals. That’s how deep his basketball fandom ran. So of course Roy flew in from Las Vegas for Game 4, so that he and his older brother Jeff could attend. For people like him, this Knicks finals run is a pilgrimage.
“We never considered selling our tickets,” Roy says. “No way!” When the Knicks were down big in Game 4, he told his brother they could still pull off a comeback. “We believed, and so did the entire arena. Not one person left,” he says.
There haven’t been this many eyeballs on an NBA Finals series since 1998, when Michael Jordan was leading the Chicago Bulls to their sixth championship. As many as 26.3 million tuned in to watch Game 3 on Monday night, and the financial implications of all those impressions are enormous. Every extra game means another night of sold out arenas, another wave of advertising revenue for ABC and ESPN, and another windfall of merchandise, concessions, sponsorships and premium ticket sales for the Knicks and Spurs.
So when people joke that “the league wants this series to go seven games,” there’s a real financial incentive behind it. An extra finals game can mean tens of millions of dollars in additional revenues.
And for all of this to be happening in New York— the city that still believes, with absolute sincerity, that it sits at the center of the universe—only magnifies the occasion, the cultural relevance, and the money. Madison Square Garden has effectively become the center of the cultural universe for two weeks straight— a place where hedge fund bros from Connecticut and TikTok stars from the West Village sit shoulder-to-shoulder beside the kind of “only in New York” characters featured in Josh Safdie movies—including Safdie himself. And where images of courtside rows featuring Timothée Chalamet, Spike Lee, and Ben Stiller have gone almost as viral as the games themselves.