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For a while now, I thought I was watching a very specific kind of story. An underdog with tenacity. A chosen one on the rise. An ascension. A coming-of-age. A fairy tale, maybe. The details were always a little hazy, but the protagonist was never in question. It was the Spurs. It just felt right. Every moment had meaning. Every setback only served the cause. The signs were everywhere if you knew how to read them. Our time had come. Our story was happening in real time, right in front of our eyes.

Somewhere in the third quarter, down fourteen, I started to wonder if I’d maybe wandered into the wrong theater.

I felt like I was drowning. Every Spurs possession was happening at warp speed. Shots went up quick and bounced out. Layups lipped out. Drives sputtered. The ball found its way into Knick hands before I could even process what was happening, and then suddenly everything was headed the other way.

These Knicks possessions, though. Those were like getting punched in slow motion. Just haymaker after haymaker and, sure, you could see every one coming but your arms were moving through molasses. There’s nothing to be done except to just sit there and take it. Then everything speeds up again and you’re dizzy from that last punch but, oops, another three just rattled out and the Knicks are headed back up the court again.

I was exhausted. I was dizzy. And I was starting to get the distinct impression that, in whatever version of this story I thought I was watching, this is not how it was supposed to go.

Much to my chagrin, I could not stop focusing on the Knicks fans in the crowd. They were making me insane. Not, like, a little annoyed. Insane. Seriously, every time a bunch of blue and orange hands went up after another bucket, it was like a galactic five-year-old found a bruise on my arm and just kept poking it. I felt like I was in my living room trying to grieve the demise of an old friend and a bunch of drunk guys were screaming BING BONG KNICKS IN FOUR BABY directly into my ear canal.

Get out of our house, you absolute ghouls.

I know. I know. It wasn’t really about them. Whatever. It’s just that it felt unfair in the specific way that life feels really unfair sometimes, when something wrong is happening right in front of you and there’s no one to appeal to and no rule being broken and it’s just happening. Why? Because.

But here’s the thing. I was so busy being mad at them for acting like they belonged there that I didn’t stop to consider why they were so sure they did.

Maybe they knew something I didn’t.

I turned the sound off with around 11 minutes left in the game. A tried and true tactic I’ve used for as long as I can remember when Sports has gotten a little too real for my taste. Something about the silence makes it seem more palatable. Like I can finally breathe and think for a second. Sometimes it’s just nice not to have to listen to Richard Jefferson anymore.

Wembanyama hit a three. That wasn’t going to fool me though. No sir. This whole game had been defined by the Spurs getting purchase on a cliff face before immediately tumbling back down a few feet and starting over. Castle got in for a pretty good dunk. Wemby blocked Hart. Their shots weren’t really falling anymore, but this wasn’t real. This was just the death rattle.

Harper with a bucket.

I’m telling you, watching this play out in silence was surreal. I obviously wasn’t going to turn the sound back on and mess with whatever favor I’d earned with the gods to inspire the run. Still, it was as if I was standing on the other side of the glass watching all of this happen to someone else. I wanted to scream or shout or bang on the window, but all I could do was stare. Mouth agape. Silently trying to will something into existence just by wanting it enough.

Our crowd was going nuts. The Knicks fans were, finally, mercifully, joining me in a silent vigil.

The score was tied. Three minutes left. Were they actually going to do this? They’d spent all night searching for answers and had they now, against all odds, finally found some? Victor took two steps, covered about a hundred feet of ground, and laid it in. The Spurs were winning. They were winning this game. Winning this series. Potentially never going to lose again.

Maybe this was our story after all. It’s wins all the way down, baby!

Wembanyama grabbing that board off the Brunson miss with 12 seconds left was the first time I actually let myself believe they were going to pull this off. The two best players on the court had just stared each other down, one on one, and Vic had prevailed. We were going to go back up, score, and dance off into the night. The story had been written. Our fate had been sealed. The stars were aligned.

Fate, it turns out, has a pretty funny sense of humor.

Before the game, Wembanyama was asked in French about this team’s habit of finding solutions only after running into problems. As usual, the frankness of his assessment kind of caught me off guard.

“We’re kind of like spoiled kids,” he said. “For some of us, it’s our first season and we’re already in the Finals. We don’t fully realize it yet. And to me, the team that appreciates the position we’re in the most will be the one that wins.”

Two games in, the Knicks look like they know exactly where they are.

How could they not? This is a franchise that has spent the better part of three decades being a punchline. Draft picks that didn’t pan out. Superstars that chose somewhere else. Stars that arrived and immediately got hurt. An owner who, at times, seemed to be actively working against his own team.

Last year, this group got within two wins of this exact moment and then Tyrese Haliburton and the Pacers ripped their hearts out.

Twenty-seven years of almost and now here they are, back in San Antonio. In the Finals. In our building. Their fans look deliriously happy and their players look like they’re on a mission from God. They all look like they’ve been waiting their whole lives for this moment.

Maybe this is the story we’ve really been watching all along.

It could be as simple as that.

Takeaways

• I’m willing to live in a world where I’m being too cynical about all this. The Spurs found something in that fourth quarter that looked real, and crazier things have happened. That said, down 0-2 heading to a Garden that is going to be absolutely feral is a lot. It’s not impossible. It’s just a lot. It’s….yeah, a lot.
• Victor looked absolutely gassed all game. Right up until he didn’t! Still, I feel like I’ve seen him miss a ton of shots he normally makes in this series and it’s for sure a little disconcerting. The biggest thing the fourth quarter showed is that this Spurs team is invincible when Wemby is looking invincible. When he’s not, well, they get pretty vincible all of a sudden. This is something that somehow continues to seem profound even though we’ve been learning it over and over again for about three years now.
• The Luke Kornet rebound off the missed Brunson free throw is an all-time moment that is going to be lost to history and I am furious about it. They put him in to do exactly one thing and he did it. He reached into a tangle of legs and limbs and came out with the basketball, somehow without stepping out of bounds. It was as stunning a play as his chase-down block in the OKC series. It deserved a better ending. Alas.
• Part of me thinks Fox should have taken that last shot. I can’t fully explain it. It just felt like that was going to be his moment. That’s why we brought him here. Everyone in the building knew Wemby was getting the ball, so why not shock the world? He had the shot, didn’t he? I’ll never know because I refuse to watch that sequence again, but in my heart I think he had it.
• Feels bad, y’all. Feels real bad right now.
• Spurs in 7.

WWL Post Game Press Conference

Have you ever actually walked into the wrong theater for a movie?

No, that seems borderline impossible. I did used to like, double dip at the theater all the time back in the day when there was nothing else really going on. It felt like once you’d given your ticket to the guy up front you really could just hang out back there in the bowels of a Regal Cinemas for days on end.

So you’d just watch multiple movies?

Sure, or just like, a double feature or something.

What was your best double feature?

My favorite one, for sure, was a combination of Mission Impossible 2 followed by Shanghai Noon. Cinema! I was a man of culture. I’ve never felt more artistically fulfilled.

You really don’t want to keep talking about that Spurs game do you?

I really don’t.

Once upon a time, we were desperate for story ideas. The COVID-19 pandemic had taken hold, there were no sports to watch, and everyone was trying to figure out how to fill the void. It was in the middle of that landscape that I began writing for Bright Side of the Sun. My first article was published only days before the entire NBA shut down.

As we navigated those strange times, I came up with an idea for an article. What if I took the game of Six Degrees of Separation with Kevin Bacon and applied it to an NBA player? Naturally, I chose Cedric Ceballos. Why? Because he exists in the middle of NBA history, which unlocks doors to the past and doors to the present. I also was a big Ceballos fan when he was a Sun, so why not?

Now, I fully understand that Cedric isn’t the true NBA equivalent. Somebody like Vince Carter or Jeff Green would probably be a better choice given the number of teams they played for and the sheer volume of teammates they accumulated throughout their careers. But this was a Suns site. I thought it would be fun. And fun it was.

Now here we are, six seasons later, and that article still sticks with me. Partly because it was fun. Partly because it was funny. Mostly because I enjoy the research. Clearly, I’m a nerd. I enjoy wandering down the endless tunnels that Basketball Reference provides, clicking from player to player and finding connections that I never knew existed.

So once again, we’re going to give this a shot. Six Degrees of Separation with Cedric Ceballos. As a reminder of the rules I established more than half a decade ago, here’s how this works. I will note that I removed some rules. It’s down to whether or not they played together or were traded for each other. Being coached by a similar person no longer counts:

Rule 1: Teammates

You can only count players who played together. Example: Yuta Tubuse played in 4 career NBA games, all for the Suns. I can use any Suns player he played with in those games, but I cannot use any of his opponents.

Rule 2: Transactions

Any player can be linked to another player via a transaction they shared. Example: Gani Lawal, who appeared in just 2 NBA minutes, was a future 2010 draft pick who was part of the Jared Dudley and Jason Richardson for Raja Bell, Boris Diaw, and Sean Singletary trade. Therefore, he is linked to those players.

Rule 3: You have 6 moves

That’s the name of the game. Six moves or fewer is a win. Do it in seven and don’t talk to me.

And of course, it wouldn’t be any fun if I were the one choosing which players to connect to Cedric Ceballos. That would be too easy. So I put out a call to arms, asking the Twitter community to provide me with some random dudes from NBA history.

It was a rocky start. I guess when you’re plugged into Suns’ Twitter, I should expect that everyone is going to try to find an obscure Suns player. Shannon Brown? Too easy. Negele Knight? Obscure, sure, but a teammate of Ceballos in Phoenix. They played 140 games with each other!

Some of the names were familiar. Some of them sent me down rabbit holes I never expected to travel. A few had me staring at Basketball Reference pages, wondering how on earth I was going to connect the dots. Which is exactly the point. Half the fun of this exercise is seeing where the journey takes you. The destination matters, sure. But the path to get there is where things get interesting.

So with a fresh list of random NBA names in hand, it’s time to see how many degrees of separation stand between them and Cedric Ceballos.

Marcus Banks to Cedric Ceballos

All right, let’s start easy. After all, it’s two members of the Phoenix Suns, right?

The easiest way to attack this is to look at the roster from Marcus Banks’s rookie season and Cedric Ceballos’s final season. The two never overlapped in the NBA, so that felt like the logical starting point.

Banks entered the league after being selected 13th overall in the 2003 NBA Draft out of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His rights, along with those of Kendrick Perkins, were traded to the Boston Celtics in exchange for Troy Bell and Dahntay Jones. As a result, Banks spent his rookie season in Boston, appearing in 81 games off the bench for a Celtics team that finished 36-46.

As for Ceballos, his final season came in 2000-01 with the Miami Heat. It’s always fun to go back and look at some of the names on those old rosters. Bruce Bowen was in his fourth NBA season. A.C. Green was there. So were Eddie House, Eddie Jones, Anthony Mason, and, of course, Dan Majerle.

But none of those names is the key. The connector is Ricky Davis.

Davis was in his second NBA season during that final year of Ceballos’s career. Originally selected 21st overall by the Charlotte Hornets in 1998, he landed in Miami two years later and shared the court with Ceballos during that final campaign. The following season, Davis was traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he spent two seasons before being dealt to the Celtics in December of 2003.

And there it is.

Step 1: Marcus Banks to Ricky Davis

Both Marcus Banks and Ricky Davis spent 2.5 seasons together with the Boston Celtics. Interestingly enough, both were traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves in January of 2006.

For Davis, Banks was a significant teammate. The two appeared in 213 games together, which ranks as the second-most games Ricky Davis played alongside any teammate during his NBA career. The same is true in reverse. Of all the players Banks shared the court with throughout his career, Davis ranks second in total games played together.

Step 2: Ricky Davis to Cedric Ceballos

As noted above, Davis spent part of the 2000-01 season with the Miami Heat, which was the final NBA season for Cedric Ceballos. The overlap was brief. Very brief. Davis and Ceballos appeared in only four games together. Fortunately, four games are still four games, and according to the highly scientific rules established for this exercise more than half a decade ago, that absolutely counts.

Which means we’ve successfully connected Marcus Banks to Cedric Ceballos in just two degrees of separation.

Luigi Datome to Cedric Ceballos

All right, here’s one that’s a little more difficult. Because I had absolutely no idea who Luigi Datome was. So well played, Bruce. Well played.

What I learned is that Datome was a 6’8” small forward who didn’t play his first NBA game until 2013, joining the Detroit Pistons at age 26. Over his two-year NBA career, he appeared in a grand total of 55 games, 37 with Detroit.

Then came the trade. When the Isaiah Thomas deal sent Thomas from the Phoenix Suns to the Boston Celtics, Datome was included as part of the package heading to Boston in a three-team deal. Ah, that’s why Bruce picked him. Because Bruce is a Boston guy.

So naturally, the next step is diving into that 2014-15 Celtics roster to see if we can find a path. And right away, one name jumps off the page. Gerald Wallace. Wallace was in his 13th NBA season at the time, and the moment I saw his name, I knew I had my starting point.

Now the question becomes where that path leads next.

Step 1: Luigi Datome to Gerald Wallace

I could have gone in a few different directions here.

There were other names on that roster. Other players who bounced around the league and would have made for an easy connection. Jeff Green was on that Celtics team, and Jeff Green is basically the holy grail for this exercise. The man has played 18 seasons for 11 different franchises. But where’s the fun in that?

Instead, I went with Gerald Wallace. Wallace entered the league in 2001 after being selected 25th overall by the Sacramento Kings. His stint in Sacramento isn’t what interests me, however. It’s the one that began in 2004-05 with the Charlotte Bobcats.

Step 2: Gerald Wallace to Eddie House

Ah, the Bobcats. Remember that team? Remember that logo? Those uniforms? It’s been more than 20 years since the Bobcats existed, and thank goodness for that. If you weren’t around back then, you missed some truly questionable fashion choices and some equally questionable basketball.

But who else was on that 2004-05 Charlotte roster? Our old friend Eddie House. Most Suns fans remember House for his electric 2005-06 season in Phoenix, when he finished 13th in Sixth Man of the Year voting and routinely came off the bench throwing gasoline on the fire. When Eddie got hot, the entire arena knew it.

As I mentioned earlier in this article, however, Eddie House and Cedric Ceballos already have a connection.

Step 3: Eddie House to Cedric Ceballos

That’s right. We return once again to Cedric’s final season in the NBA. The 2000-01 season happened to be the rookie campaign for Eddie House. After being selected 37th overall out of Arizona State University in the 2000 NBA Draft by the Miami Heat, House landed on the same roster that featured Cedric Ceballos during the final stop of Ced’s NBA career.

And just like that, we’ve connected Gigi Datome to Cedric Ceballos in three degrees of separation. Not bad for a guy I had never heard of 20 minutes ago.

Neal Walk to Cedric Ceballos

Okay, I like this one. It still lives in the Suns’ universe, but we’re going way back. All the way back to a player the Phoenix Suns selected in the 1969 NBA Draft. Neal Walk.

Walk, a center out of the University of Florida, was essentially the consolation prize. He’s the player Phoenix ended up with after calling heads in the coin flip that ultimately gave the Milwaukee Bucks the right to draft Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who at the time was still known as Lew Alcindor. But hey, he had a magnificent beard.

Walk spent 4.5 seasons with the Suns, averaging 14.7 points and 8.9 rebounds per game. He was a solid player. A productive player. It’s also safe to say Phoenix lost that coin flip. After all, Lew Alcindor became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and there’s a strong argument that he’s the third greatest player in NBA history.

Walk remained with the Suns until 1974, when he was traded, along with a second-round pick, to the New Orleans Jazz for three players and a first-round pick. That pick eventually changed hands and was used by the Buffalo Braves to select Adrian Dantley out of the University of Notre Dame. Another Hall of Famer. Because apparently this story wasn’t finished torturing Suns fans.

But there’s my starting point. Walk spent only one season with the Jazz, appearing in 34 games. And during that lone season, he shared the court with E. C. Coleman. That’s where the trail begins.

Step 1: Neal Walk to E.C. Coleman

E.C. Coleman was a power forward out of Houston Baptist University who was selected in the third round of the 1973 NBA Draft by the Houston Rockets. Yes, there used to be more than two rounds, even though the league was smaller. He was a Rocket for a couple of years, but when the New Orleans Jazz entered the NBA in 1974, they selected Coleman in the expansion draft.

It turned out to be a solid pick. Coleman spent three seasons with the Jazz and eventually earned All-Defensive First Team honors in 1976-77. The season that interests us, however, is 1974-75. That Jazz team was rough. They opened the year with an 11-game losing streak and started the season 3-34 before finally putting together a two-game winning streak. They ultimately finished 23-59, but it was during that season that Coleman and Neal Walk shared the court.

Coleman eventually entered free agency and signed with the Golden State Warriors in 1977. After being waived in 1978, he returned to Houston and played 6 games for the Rockets. Six games that, for most people, wouldn’t matter. For this exercise, those six games are everything.

Step 2: E.C. Coleman to Moses Malone

During those six games in Houston, Coleman played alongside Moses Malone. Not a bad teammate to stumble across.

It was Malone’s third NBA season after beginning his professional career in the ABA, and 1978-79 became a landmark year for him. He appeared in all 82 games, averaging 24.8 points and 17.6 rebounds per contest. The accolades piled up. All Star. All NBA First Team. All Defensive Second Team. And most importantly, MVP.

Malone remained with Houston for three more seasons, winning another MVP award in 1982 before being traded to the Philadelphia 76ers for Caldwell Jones and a 1983 first-round pick. And once he arrived in Philadelphia, the next connection practically made itself.

Step 3: Moses Malone to Julius Erving

The 1982-83 season brought together Moses Malone and Julius Erving, better known as Dr. J. Talk about a duo. Malone won MVP that season. Dr. J finished fifth in MVP voting. Both earned All-NBA First Team honors as the 76ers rolled through the league.

Erving had begun his professional career in the ABA and entered the NBA in 1976 at age 26. He would spend 11 seasons in the NBA and eventually become one of the most influential and celebrated players in basketball history.

At this point, the next connection feels almost inevitable. We’re talking about the Philadelphia 76ers in the mid 1980s. That means we’re talking about Sir Charles.

Step 4: Julius Erving to Charles Barkley

Charles Barkley, drafted 5th overall in the 1985 Draft, and Julius Erving appeared in 226 games together. The pair went 130-66 during the regular season, although postseason success proved harder to find. They went 16-14 in the playoffs during their shared time in Philadelphia.

Of course, the Eastern Conference wasn’t exactly welcoming. This was the era of Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics.The era of Isiah Thomas and the Detroit Pistons. The beginning of the era of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. There were heavyweights everywhere.

Philadelphia captured its championship in 1983 before Barkley arrived, and despite all of Charles’s greatness, he never got another crack at a title with the 76ers. That opportunity would come later when he moved out west to the Valley of the Sun.

Step 5: Charles Barkley to Cedric Ceballos

And now we’ve arrived at the destination. A journey spanning decades, from Neal Walk’s era in the early late 60s to 1992, when Charles Barkley arrived in Phoenix, and Cedric Ceballos was entering his third NBA season out of California State University, Fullerton.

Ced was a star on the rise. Honestly, I’ll go to my grave believing that if he had been healthy during that NBA Finals run, Barkley might have a championship ring and Suns fans might feel a little differently about the franchise’s history. Instead, we’re left wondering what could have been.

What we do know is that Barkley and Ceballos appeared in 131 games together. And with that, Neal Walk is connected to Cedric Ceballos in five degrees of separation.

That’s enough for this session, isn’t it? We got a little history lesson. We exercised parts of our basketball brains that probably haven’t been used in quite some time. And along the way, we managed to connect a handful of seemingly random players to Cedric Ceballos.

That’s the beauty of this exercise. It sends you wandering through decades of NBA history, stumbling across forgotten franchises, forgotten players, strange trades, and connections that you never would have considered otherwise. And honestly, I enjoy every minute of it.

So who knows? Maybe I’ll continue accepting the challenges thrown my way and keep this experiment going as the summer rolls on. There are certainly enough random names out there to keep me occupied. For now, though, I think these three examples prove the point. No matter how obscure the player, no matter how far back in NBA history you go, no matter how impossible the challenge initially appears. You can connect just about anyone who has ever played in the NBA to Cedric Ceballos.

And if you can’t?

Well, then I probably haven’t spent enough time on Basketball Reference yet.

He’s a Knicks-tradamus.

A Long Islander went viral this week for predicting the Knicks’ NBA Finals run in his 2020 high school yearbook.

Evan Pfeufer of Kings Park shared a photo Thursday of his quote in Smithtown High School West’s yearbook, “Knicks in 6. 2026 NBA Finals” — and it racked up more than 5 million views in one day.

The now-23-year-old told The Post how he decided on the very specific prediction.

“It’s so simple. Knicks in six 2026 rhymes so incredibly well,” he said.

The Knicks superfan recalled his parents’ disappointment when he showed them the book six years ago.

“It was so funny, my parents were like, ‘Evan, why?’ Why would you do this?'” he said.

Now, they are reconsidering, and likening their son to a modern-day Nostradamus.

“My dad is questioning if I’m a human or not,” he said.

Pfeufer, whose impressive high school resume included serving as an officer in the Business Honor Society, purposely chose not to include any of his accomplishments on his yearbook page in order for his Knicks quote to stand out.

“They gave us an option, and I said, ‘No, I just want this,'” he recalled.

“Hand over Bible, I purposely didn’t put my honor societies and all the stuff I got because I was like, ‘What if this actually happens? Everybody else has this long a– quote with all their achievements, and me, I would get it right.'”

As it started looking like his 2020 prediction could actually come to fruition, he texted his childhood friend a photo of the yearbook page

“And I was like, ‘Imagine if this happens,'” he said.

He then posted it on his private Snapchat page and his friends encouraged him to share it on a larger platform, so he submitted it to the sports Instagram account Overtime, which boasts 10.4 million followers, and it “instantly” went viral.

Pfeufer, who graduated from Adelphi University and now works as a sales rep, is hoping the post grabs the attention of the Knicks.

“My friend said, ‘If the Knicks don’t get you to one of the games or something, I would be livid,'” he said.

“I don’t expect anything, I’m just a guy with a prediction, but it would be pretty cool.”

The Knicks have his back.

Staten Islander Matt McAllister has a Mount Rushmore of Knicks greats inked across his back — including current MVP Jalen Brunson.

And when McAllister took his shirt off to reveal the jaw-dropping tattoo to Brunson himself, the captain was stunned.

“He seems like he’s a guy of very little words . . . but he was like, ‘Oh, that’s hard,'” McAllister, 34, told The Post.

“Then he said, ‘But Rushmore’s only got four.’

“So I told him I had to add an extra just for him.”

Then shocked star guard Josh Hart “pulled out his phone. He’s like, ‘I gotta take a photo of this. Holy s–t!'”

McAllister presented the over-the-top tat — also featuring legends John Starks, Walt Frazier, Patrick Ewing and Carmelo Anthony — to Brunson and Hart in September at a meet-and-greet for the duo’s Roommates Block Party.

McAllister said the idea for the All-Star artwork came last season when the Knicks finished 51-31, but lost to the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals — a round short of the NBA Finals. 

“After that run we had last year, I was like, ‘Wow, this is really monumental. Let me think of a monument that I can honor everybody with.'”

The tat cost $9,000 and took 36 hours over six sessions to make. MSG was there to capture it for a commercial.

“I might only see this once in my lifetime again. I have no regrets,” he said.

Other Knicks superfans have opted for leg tattoos of the “King of New York.”

Ray Rosado, a native of Yonkers, got a $1,350 leg tattoo of Brunson two days after the Knicks lost the 2025 Eastern Conference Finals, “because I had a feeling they would go to the finals this year,” he said.

His tattoo artist warned him against the very permanent decision.

“He said, ‘You know, if you get it and they don’t go to the finals, it’s going to still be on your body,'” Rosado recalled.

Rosado, 33, a teacher at New Rochelle High School — whose students alerted him when his tattoo went viral — explained why he chose the photo of Captain Clutch praying during Game 1 of last year’s conference finals.

“I’m not really religious myself, but I felt that was the moment to symbolize that great things are coming your way. You just have to wait for that moment. And that’s all that Brunson has been talking about this year, that the job’s not finished yet,” he said.

Nolan Parr of Queens got inked on May 23, two days before the Knicks swept the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals to make it to the final round.

The native of Red Hook in Dutchess County, NY — who went with a $800 tattoo of the three-time NBA All-Star doing his signature thumb-and-index finger move — has been a fan since he’s “been in diapers.”

“Because my father was a diehard Knicks fan from back in the day. So it’s always the classic, ‘Who’s better Clyde or Jalen,’ between me and him,” Parr, 32, said.

Mirko Falzone of Bergamo, Italy, has never even been to a Knicks game, but in October, decided to get a huge tattoo of Brunson’s face on his leg, along with a smaller full-body image of the MVP on the court in his No. 11 jersey.

Falzone, 32, was always a fan of the NBA, but wasn’t watching regularly until Brunson joined the roster in 2022, and since Italy is ahead of New York by six hours, he’s been waking up at 2 a.m. to catch him playing.

“When Jalen Brunson arrived to New York, my passion came back,” he said. “And the desire to stay awake during the night here in Italy to watch the games.”

But in Italy, most have no clue who’s on his leg.

“Everyone here only knows LeBron James, Wembanyama,” he said, laughing. “Someone asked if it was Travis Scott.”

I used to live in New York, Brooklyn to be exact. I remember how expensive it was compared to San Antonio, where I grew up and currently live. Over a decade ago, I paid rent on an 800 square foot apartment that to this day is more expensive than the mortgage on my house.

New York is a hub of culture — concerts, theater, symphonies, operas — but it will cost you.

Right now, there is no hotter ticket available than the NBA Finals. At last search, ticket prices continue to rise.

Game 3’s “get in” price is $8,200 for a nosebleed seat. That’s a $700 rise since Thursday alone. Game 4 starts at $8,500 and entry to a possible Game 6 will run you $9,000. That’s more than a Super Bowl ticket or even a seat at the upcoming FIFA World Cup.

On Thursday, the NBA held media day for both the Spurs and Knicks. Jalen Brunson got this question:

“I know you’re focused on tomorrow, but you know New York is going crazy for everything that you guys do. Ticket prices have been ridiculous. Last night after you guys won, they went crazy higher. There was a report that in the last row of the Garden, there are seats on sale for $7,500. What show would you pay that amount of money to go see?”

Brunson took a minute. His beathe was audible as he considered the premise.

“That’s a good question. A live Michael Jackson performance. That’s a good one. That’s a good one.”

Brunson smirked as he responded, revealing he was really taken aback by the question. His answer also reveals he some respectable old school tastes. Michael Jackson was one one of the greatest and most popular music artists, he was an amazing performer. To this day, Thriller remains the best selling album of all time.

For perspective, a ticket to see Michael Jackson in 1984 cost roughly $30, considered high at the time. In 1988, a ticket to see his Bad world tour at London’s Wembley Stadium was £17.50, or roughly $65 in American dollars today. $7,500 in the 80s should have yielded the concert, backstage passes, catered meal, limo to and from, private jet to the city of your choice, and singing Paul McCartney part on “The Girl Is Mine.”

As the series heads to The Big Apple, contemplate the question for yourself- is there a ticket worth $7,500 of your hard earned money?

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I live in Harlem, and there’s a middle-aged man named Michael who grew up in Queens and holds court on a bench along the fringes of Morningside Park, where he chats with neighbors who stroll by.

These days we talk mostly about the New York Knicks.

I met Michael the same way I met Jonah, who’s turning 30 and grew up upstate, near Woodstock — through our dogs.

Jonah is a die-hard Knicks fan who endured Frank Ntilikina and Noah Vonleh starting lineups in the late 2010s. When I cover playoff games at Madison Square Garden, I make sure to stash the rally towels and T-shirts staffers leave draped over each seat because I give them to Jonah. His texts, these days, are downright giddy.