Spurs Tried to Block Knicks Fans From NBA Finals Game 5. The Knicks Just Called Them Out.
The San Antonio Spurs were not subtle about what they wanted to do for Game 5 of the NBA Finals. They wanted to keep Knicks fans out of Frost Bank Center.
Ticketmaster sales for Saturday’s potential elimination game were restricted to buyers within a 150-mile radius of the arena. A warning posted on the listing made clear that purchases from outside that zone would be canceled without notice and refunds given.
The New York Post ran with the story Saturday morning. The headline practically wrote itself. Spurs blocking out-of-towners from a Finals game looked, at minimum, like a panicked move from a team down 3-1 in the series.
The Knicks Push Back
By Saturday afternoon, the Knicks had heard enough. MSG Sports issued a statement confirming that they had spoken directly with Spurs ownership and received assurance that no Knicks fans who had already bought tickets would have them revoked.
“MSG has confirmed with Spurs ownership that Spurs will not be revoking any Knicks fans’ tickets for tonight,” the statement read.
So the restrictions on Ticketmaster were real. The actual ticket revocation? Not happening. The Spurs were trying to limit future purchases by Knicks fans, not yank tickets out of the hands of people who already had them.
It Was Never Going to Work Anyway
This is one of those stories that sounds wild on the surface but falls apart with a few seconds of thought. The Spurs can do whatever they want on the primary market. They have zero control over the secondary market.
StubHub. SeatGeek. Vivid. Every major resale site moves tickets in San Antonio for buyers in New York every single day. A 150-mile radius rule on Ticketmaster does nothing to stop a Knicks fan from buying a Game 5 seat at face value from someone in Texas and walking right in.
Knicks fans have been a road show all postseason. They took over Philadelphia. They showed up in Cleveland. They have made themselves heard inside every gym this team has visited. The idea that San Antonio was going to pull off some kind of regional firewall at the Finals was always silly.
The Bigger Picture
The Spurs are one loss away from elimination. They have one chance to extend the series and force a Game 6 back at Madison Square Garden, where the Knicks would have a chance to clinch on their home floor and the Spurs would walk into the buzzsaw of a championship-starved New York crowd.
So San Antonio tried everything it could think of to protect the home court advantage. Stack the building with locals. Make the visiting fans uncomfortable. Use every legal lever the franchise has.
It was always a long shot to work. With this much money on the line and a team this hungry, you cannot keep New Yorkers out of an NBA Finals game by tweaking the dropdown menu on Ticketmaster.
The real test comes at tipoff. We will see how loud the building actually gets. Either way, the Spurs have already lost the optics battle. And if they lose Game 5 too, the whole episode is going to look ten times worse in the morning.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
