The Knicks will play host to their first playoff game since 2004 when they lost Game 3 and Stephon Marbury’s crew got swept, 3-0, by the Nets in the best-of-5 series. This is a much hotter ticket than that, though the Knicks are trailing 2-0 in this best-of-seven first-round series.
According to Ben Kessler of Seatgeek.com, which studies the secondary market prices for NBA tickets, tomorrow’s game averaged a whopping $342 — which is well above the average $136 for the next-most expensive game in the Eastern Conference, Game 3 of the Heat at Sixers.
The cheapest ticket on the secondary market for tomorrow’s Game 3 is $244, with courtside tickets being sold yesterday as high as $5,000. The Knicks tickets on the secondary market are averaging more than $100 more than the Lakers’ first-round home games at Staples Center.
Tickets for Sunday’s Game 4 is a little lower, averaging $331, with courtside seats as high as $3,000.
“Hopefully there’ll be a lot of cheers,” Boston’s Rajon Rondo said. “New York is kind of close to Boston so hopefully they’ll sell us a lot of tickets.”
The game is listed as a sell-out, but Garden officials plan to release a very small number on game day.
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Make it three straight games for Shaquille O’Neal.
Celtics coach Doc Rivers ruled O’Neal out for Game 3 but kept hope alive the big guy could play Sunday.
Rivers also continued to say that O’Neal, down with a calf injury, will play at some point in the playoffs.
“He’s not going to play [tomorrow],” River said. “He’s going to try to [do some work today]. I just don’t see it.
“I’m just going to be a real doctor right now and say I doubt it,” he said. “But he is going to try to do some things and we’ll see. He’s had some improvement, but I don’t know how much. [The medical staff] said he’s had some improvement, so I’ll relay that onto you guys.”
It’s still up in the air if O’Neal will travel with the team today.
“If you see him on a trip that means he’s really close [to playing],” Rivers said. “Obviously if he goes on the trip, that means we think he’ll play Sunday.”
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Jermaine O’Neal received treatment on his left wrist which he mildly sprained Tuesday.
“His wrist was bothering him, but he could have come back. It was a tough call,” Rivers said. “That’s a coaching dilemma. They’re small, Baby [Glen Davis] was playing up and down. . . . But we had a decent flow — sometimes it’s not an individual player but the flow — and the flow was good and so you’re kind of stuck. I don’t like Baby playing that many minutes in a row either. So it was just one of those tough calls.”
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Ray Allen said he is prepared for a loud Madison Square Garden. But he has heard loud arenas before and he brought up — believe it or not — Atlanta, where the first round, seven-game series in 2008 was truly memorable. And loud.
“They hadn’t been in the playoffs in a long time,” he said. “When we went there, they rose to the occasion and that was the loudest I ever heard it from their fan base, based on where they’d come from.
“So you never know what to expect,” he said. “You just have to stay insulated as a team.”