The weekend will probably start a few hours early, the opening bell for happy hour maybe preceding the closing bell on Wall Street by a bit, because it will be a Friday night in Manhattan, one month into spring, and there is a big basketball game beckoning in the middle of the island, in the most famous gymnasium of all.
It’s going to be a monster weekend anyway at Madison Square Garden, the Knicks and the Rangers alternating days in this splendid sporting spring in New York City, the basketball taking over Friday and Sunday, the hockey on Saturday and Monday. Once more we will be reminded that the Garden, given the chance, is the undisputed capital of sporting New York.
“I’m very excited,” Knicks guard Jalen Brunson said Thursday, after the Knicks had run through another practice to shake free the memory of Tuesday’s 107-90 loss at Cleveland that tied this best-of-seven Eastern Conference playoff series at 1-1.
“It’s going to be a great place to play. It’s always been the best place to play in the league. It’s going to be unreal. I just know that it’s going to be an electric atmosphere, for sure.”
On Friday and Sunday there will be 19,812 people squeezed into the old joint five stories up on Penn Station to watch the Knicks’ simmering bloodbath with the Cavs, and on Saturday and Monday there will be 18,006 circling a big-city rink when the Devils and the Rangers extend one of the greatest intramural feuds we have around here.
It starts with the Knicks, Friday night, an hour later than the usual tipoff so you would expect some boffo business for the favored watering holes in Midtown. Remarkably, Friday will be the first full building for the Knicks in almost 10 full years, since they bought themselves a couple extra days of season back on May 16, 2013, an 85-75 win over the Pacers in Game 5 of the East semifinals.
What’s followed has been eight years of futility and one year of COVID-restricted admission that capped the games against Atlanta in the 2021 playoffs at 16,512. So you can expect some kind of electric greeting for both teams Friday night, and it will be a quintessential New York City crowd — eager to explode, but just as willing to offer the locals … well, shall we say, a “spirited” prompting should things inch in the wrong direction.
“Yeah, it can be good or bad, depending on how you use it,” Randle said of the homecoming the Knicks are going to receive when they take the floor for the layup lines Friday night, and then once the game begins just past 8:30. “The crowd’s going to be on our side, it’s going to be a lot of fun. MSG’s going to be rocking. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be hard to talk. The floor’s going to be shaking, all that different type of stuff.
“It’ll definitely be a cool atmosphere to play in. You’ve just got to stay poised out there, be in the moment. Realize what you have to do. The game is still the same. It’s still the same game, regardless of everything that’s going on out there.”
Want to catch a game? The Knicks schedule with links to buy tickets can be found here.
It’ll just be a decibel or three louder.
The Knicks have played 144 playoff games at this latest iteration of the Garden, which opened for business in 1968. They’ve won 100 of them. Some of them are among the most unforgettable games ever played within the boundaries of New York City, and the echo of those long-ago nights rattles still the memories of the people who were there.
But the Knicks are also 6-12 for their past 18 home playoff games going back to 2001. A home crowd helps. As with everything else, it’s more useful when the team is worthy of the devotion. As Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said Thursday:
“It’s always an advantage to play at home if you’re giving them things to cheer about. But if you’re relying on them to win the game they can’t win the game for you. They can bring energy to the game.
“We know we have we feel the best arena, best fans, best city. So go out there and play the best you can, do it together and play smart. If we do that we know our fans will respond to that. They always have.”
That goes back to March 23, 1968, the first-ever home playoff in this Garden, a 128-117 win over the 76ers. Wilt Chamberlain led the defending champs with 24 points and 17 assists; a rookie named Walt Frazier had 24 points and seven assists for the Knicks. The game wasn’t a sellout, as just 15,911 came. The NIT final that same afternoon, Dayton over Kansas, drew 19,008.
The Garden and the city would soon enough reckon that the Knicks were its prized basketball tenant, and across the years the folks have filled the place out, regardless of how many seats were available: 19,500 at first, then 19,588 and 19,694, then 19,763.
And now 19,812. They’ll all be there Friday night. They’ll all be ready. If the Knicks are too? Then Con Edison just might be able to take the night off. The Garden will have all of the juice.