NEW YORK — Madison Square Garden has hosted just about everything in the world of sports and entertainment, from the first Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight to the first Wrestlemania.
It just hasn’t seen much of the NBA Finals.
The New York Knicks have brought the league title series back to their home court for the first time since 1999 and can make sure they don’t leave again this year. Fans are spending astonishingly high prices for tickets and the potential to witness a celebration more than five decades in the making.
With a 2-0 lead over the Western Conference champion San Antonio Spurs, the Eastern Conference-best Knicks are halfway to their first NBA title since 1973 and third overall. They are the biggest thing in the Big Apple, and it seems everyone is caught up in the hoopla, except the Knicks themselves.
“I know the fan base is really excited, as they should be,” New York captain Jalen Brunson said. “But as a team, us inside the locker room, we have more work to do.”
Game 3 is Monday night, with President Donald Trump — a native New Yorker — expected in the building and enhanced security meaning the watch parties in which thousands of fans gathered outside Madison Square Garden for the first two contests of the series are a no-go.
Whether they’ve played in the arena or sat way up in the cheap seats — not that there is such a thing this time with tickets reselling for more than $10,000 — people know this night will be different.
“I think it’s going to be through the roof,” said Spurs guard Dylan Harper, whose team is trying to bounce back from home losses last Wednesday, 105-95, and Friday, 105-104. “I think it’s going to be everything that I’ve kind of seen or dreamed of times 10.”
It will be the first NBA Finals game at the Garden since June 25, 1999, which ended with the Knicks watching the Spurs celebrate after winning Game 5 for the first of what are now five championships for that franchise.
That series, and one in 1994, were the only NBA Finals games played at MSG since the Knicks won the 1973 title, their second championship in four years. They were rarely close again until this 13-game winning streak, the second longest by any team in one edition of the NBA playoffs, with the atmosphere around the city seemingly becoming more raucous with each victory.
“Fans have earned the right and deserve the right to see Finals basketball be played here at Madison Square Garden,” Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns said. “For this to be the first game in a long time that they have seen Finals basketball, it’s up to us to bring it, give them something to cheer for, give them something to get loud for and also give them something to believe in.”
Brunson, San Antonio star Victor Wembanyama and the rest of the players will be only part of the scene Monday, sharing it with the first sitting U.S. president to attend an NBA Finals game and the celebrity fans who surround the court. Some of them were already there Sunday for practices, with Knicks coach Mike Brown finally getting to meet actor Ben Stiller, then having his news conference extended when rapper Fat Joe insisted on a chance to speak from the back.
Wembanyama got to show his stuff at MSG in his second season, when the Spurs were given the leadoff game on the NBA’s marquee Christmas schedule for 2024, and he scored 42 points. Opportunities like that, which the Spurs increasingly have been treated to since selecting the 7-foot-4 phenom from France with the No. 1 pick of the 2023 draft, could help them with what they will face as they try to avoid the dreaded 3-0 deficit.
“This arena’s like no other. The added circumstances will be on top of that,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “We’ve been fortunate to play some games in this arena recently that have been, again, not Finals, but a Christmas game. Again, I just think added attention around Victor and being in this arena a few times, we’ve experienced that. I would expect tomorrow will be more than that.”
The Knicks have been so dominant during their postseason run that they haven’t gotten to see their home court much. They have played only four games at MSG since May 4, when they opened the second round of the playoffs. So even the home team struggles to put into words exactly what Monday will look and sound like.
“I’ve seen a lot of crazy atmospheres,” New York guard Deuce McBride said. “I don’t think I’m going to know what to expect, but I’m just proud to be here, I’m so blessed to play here, and I know the fans are going to bring it and we’re going to do everything we can.”
The arena that shook when Willis Reed walked onto the court for Game 7 in 1970 will surely be rocking again. The current MSG had opened just a couple of years earlier, and the previous one never hosted an NBA Finals game. The Knicks made it three straight years from 1951-53, but those games were played at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue because the Garden was hosting the circus.
Game 3 kicks off a massive sports week in the New York region, with a World Cup game scheduled for Saturday in nearby East Rutherford, New Jersey, which will host multiple matches during the 48-team soccer tournament, including the title match next month.
New York forward Josh Hart had signed on in an ambassador role for the local World Cup committee but knows the Knicks have put even the planet’s biggest sporting event on the back burner for the moment.
“I love football, man, so obviously a little bummed I can’t go to some of those matches, but I have something a little more interesting right now going on in my life,” Hart said. “It also adds to the energy of the city.”