Worldwide Sports News

Iman Shumpert had postgame commitments after the Knicks’ wild Game 4 win.

He decided to make other plans.

The former Knicks guard bailed on an ESPN podcast appearance Wednesday night so he could join the celebration outside Madison Square Garden after the Knicks’ dramatic NBA Finals comeback win over the San Antonio Spurs.

Shumpert was set to appear on “The Hoop Collective” podcast but said he instead was heading to Seventh Avenue with J.R. Smith to celebrate with the fans outside MSG.

And he did exactly that.

Video posted to social media showed Shumpert outside MSG in the middle of a swarm of fired-up Knicks fans, smiling, high-fiving and soaking in the scene as the Garden celebration spilled into the street.

Shumpert did not appear to be in any rush to get back to work as he held up five fingers and said “Knicks in five.”

Instead, the 2011 first-round pick leaned into the moment, greeting fans and partying with the same crowd that embraced him during his time in New York.

The scene came after the Knicks erased a 29-point deficit to beat the Spurs, 107-106, and take a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals.

That was more than enough to turn Seventh Avenue into a full-blown Knicks party.

For Shumpert, it was also a reminder of the bond he still has with the city.

He played parts of four seasons with the Knicks after they selected him with the No. 17 overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, becoming a fan favorite for his defense, energy and unmistakable style.

He later won a championship with the Cavaliers in 2016, alongside Smith, but New York has never quite let him go.

It was a fitting scene on a night when seemingly every Knicks fan in the city wanted to be part of the moment.

The Knicks now head to San Antonio for Game 5 with a chance to win their first NBA title since 1973.

Jalen Brunson barely looked like he cared.

After the Knicks’ stunning 29-point comeback in Game 4 of the NBA Finals Wednesday night, Warriors star Draymond Green sat with Brunson on “Inside the NBA” and apologized for the criticism he’s given him leading up to the Finals.

“I apologize. I will say it to your face… I’m sorry,” Green said on “Inside the NBA” after the game. “Then, I will say it when you go and get your ring: I apologize.”

But with slides on and a microphone in hand, Brunson sat stoically with the studio show’s crew after his 36-point masterpiece, clearly not giving much attention to Green’s apology.

“I appreciate that (Green’s apology),” Brunson said.

Green, a four-time champion and All-Star with the Warriors, has been critical of the Knicks and Brunson throughout their playoff run, saying the team’s path to the Finals was easy and that Brunson isn’t capable of being the top player on a championship team.

“And I double down on this. Just like Becky Hammon said, prove me wrong,” Green said on the “Draymond Green Show” on May 31. “Prove me wrong, double down, absolutely double down. Getting out of the East has never been a surefire way at a championship

“What are y’all talking about? You get out of the East cause you’re supposed to get out of the East. It’s the f–king East, of course, you’re supposed to get out of the East. That just don’t mean you win a championship because you get out of the East. It’s the f–king East.”

Green was referencing comments made by Hammon, the current Las Vegas Aces head coach and former Spurs assistant, where she said in 2023 that Brunson was “too small” to be a “1A” player and that he couldn’t lead the Knicks to a championship.

Even as Brunson helped the Knicks punch their Finals ticket on May 25, Hammon still doubled down on her take.

“I speak from experience,” Hammon said in an X video on May 26. “Allen Iverson got MVP, and he lost in the Finals. I think the two best teams are in the West, but I’m up for being proven wrong.”

“That’s the other thing, I think Jalen Brunson’s a hell of a player, a hell of a player. I’m speaking historically on the NBA with what I said. I don’t know why everybody’s so stuck on that. I said it two years ago.”

Brunson, who’s averaged 24 or more points per game each of his four years with the Knicks, hasn’t let the critiques get to him.

After scoring 36 points in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday night, Brunson and the Knicks are just a win away from their first title since 1973.

The Knicks can close it out Saturday in Game 5 at 8:30 p.m. Eastern.

New York Post may be compensated and/or receive an affiliate commission if you click or buy through our links. Featured pricing is subject to change.

And it’s back to the road.

Following an improbable and downright magical Game 4 win at Madison Square Garden, Jalen Brunson, OG Anunoby and the New York Knicks are set to return to Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs’ Frost Bank Center for Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Saturday, June 13.

If you’d like to be there, last-minute tickets for the game that could theoretically clinch the Knicks’ first title since 1973 (!) are still available.

At the time of publication, the lowest price we could find on Game 5 seats was $1,764 including fees on SeatGeek.

For those hoping to get closer to the action, 100-level seats start at $4,494 including fees.

Make sure to use promo code NYPOST10 for $10 off purchases over $250 at checkout (Editor’s Note: this discount is only valid for users’ first purchase on SeatGeek).

While expensive, tickets are still much cheaper than what they cost for games at MSG.

Based on our findings, last-minute seats for those contests began at $4,585 and $3,383 including fees on game day.

On a travel level, flights, hotels and AirBnBs are still available in the San Antonio area.

That being said, many fans may already be a step ahead of you.

Fora, the modern travel agency, recently reported that “bookings to San Antonio for Friday, June 12th, were up 246% year-over-year. During the finals period in San Antonio (June 3-6, 12-14 and 18-20), the average daily room rate is up 984% YoY.”

We recommend comparing prices for airfare on Booking.com, which has round-trip tickets going for as low as $1,335 on American Airlines.

Airbnb rooms with near five-star reviews in San Antonio can be snagged for $131 a night.

In the event you don’t have a calculator on hand, a ticket ($1,764), airfare ($1,335) and room ($263 for two nights) will run you roughly $3,362.

Pricey, yes. But how many times in your life will you get an opportunity to see the Knicks win the NBA Finals live?

We’ll see you in the Alamo City.

What do tickets cost for Spurs NBA Finals games in San Antonio?

All Spurs playoff home game dates at the Frost Bank Center and the cheapest tickets available are listed here:

What do tickets cost for Knicks NBA Finals games at MSG?

A complete calendar, including all announced Knicks NBA Finals home game dates and the best prices on tickets can be found below.

How can I watch the Knicks and Spurs in the NBA Finals on TV?

Fans hoping to catch Mike Brown’s ballers on the tube can watch all NBA Finals games on ABC and ESPN.

Just make sure to review your local listings before tuning in.

If you don’t have cable, your best bet may be DIRECTV.

Huge concerts at MSG in 2026

Sticking around NYC and want to catch a show or three once the season ends?

MSG has you covered.

The legendary venue has booked a number of exciting acts to entertain audiences all summer long.

Here are just five of our favorites you won’t want to miss live.

• Bon Jovi (July 7-9, 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 23, 26)

• Earth, Wind, and Fire with Lionel Richie (July 11)

• Phish (July 22, 24, 25, 27, 29)

• RUSH (July 28, 30, Aug. 1, 3)

• J. Cole (Aug. 2, 4)

Want to see who else is Big Apple-bound? Check out this list of all the upcoming events at Madison Square Garden to find the show for you.

Why you should trust ‘Post Wanted’ by the New York Post

This article was written by Matt Levy, New York Post live events reporter. Levy stays up-to-date on all the latest tour announcements from your favorite musical artists and comedians, as well as Broadway openings, sporting events and more live shows – and finds great ticket prices online. Since he started his tenure at the Post in 2022, Levy has reviewed a Bruce Springsteen concert and interviewed Melissa Villaseñor of SNL fame, to name a few. Please note that deals can expire, and all prices are subject to change.

A second video shows just exactly what Knicks fans were pelting Victor Wembanyama with.

An initial video that emerged Wednesday night that showed the Spurs star getting hit by an unknown object, but a new video seemingly confirmed it was eggs flying around Wembanyama’s head as he was arriving at the team hotel hotel, the Ritz-Carlton.

After blowing a 29-point lead in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, the 22-year-old ducked while trying to walk into the hotel as a horde of Knicks fans screamed at him and his teammates. 

Security guards grabbed Wembanyama and quickly escorted him inside the hotel as fans shouted “Wemby” in angry fashion.

Early Thursday morning, fans took to X to voice their displeasure with the situation. 

“As a Knick fan, I absolutely hate this. I don’t like what Wemby is doing on the court. It pisses me off. But game is settled between the lines. Never take sports anger outside the arena. Whether it is fans or players, win and lose with class folks. Don’t be a-holes,” X user @BrettErmilio posted. 

“Man at the end of the day, it’s just basketball. Don’t ever dehumanize players,” X user @LakersPixie also posted. 

It’s not the first instance of violence and security concerns surrounding Knick fans during the NBA Finals. 

Following the Game 2 watch party outside Madison Square Garden, 26 people were detained. 

After the Game 3 watch party at Bryant Park, 21 more were taken into custody, and five officers were even injured after fans threw objects at them. 

The Frenchman — aside from being the Spurs biggest star — is public enemy No. 1 in New York City after he wasn’t called for a flagrant foul after shoving Jalen Brunson to the ground in Game 3. 

Wembanyama still finished Game 4 with 24 points and 13 rebounds, but missed key free throws late to keep the Knicks in the game. 

With their backs against the wall, the Spurs look to avoid elimination in Saturday’s Game 5 as the series shifts back to San Antonio.

There’s a thought that keeps haunting me as I watch the NBA Finals this year. 

What if former Dallas Maverick superstar Luka Doncic  – currently Los Angeles Lakers – had the same guidance and preparation early on and before even entering the league that the San Antonio Spurs’ young superstar Victor Wembanyama did?

Would that have made his journey in the NBA easier and smoother, and perhaps helped him win a championship and an MVP award faster? 

And could it have helped him gain the recognition many believe he deserves – but isn’t getting – from the media and talking heads?

Wemby came into the league so prepared and so comfortable with who he was that it almost shocked fans and media. How could he not care that people snickered because he brought a book to read before the All-Star game?

How is he able to quote philosophers, and insist on showing his emotions – unlike most other players his age? 

Why has he not spent his whole life dunking on opponents rather than educating himself to be prepared to take on both the mental and physical challenge of being the best?

To some, this may come off as arrogance. And maybe to some extent it is, because he truly believes he can be the best, and he is confident in that and in himself – because he puts in the work. That is not very different from some of the best players to play the game of basketball. It actually sounds very similar. He came into the league, knowing who he was, who he wanted to be, and he never steered off that path. 

Imagine if someone like Luka Doncic had come into the league as prepared and well-guided as Victor Wembanyama. His first seven years in the NBA may have looked very differently. 

This is no slight to Luka Doncic at all, who has been known to trust people around him, but unfortunately has learned down the line that people are not always as good at their job as you would assume. 

When Wemby entered the league, he came almost fully formed in how to take care of his extraordinary physique, how to work on specific movements like flexibility and balance for injury prevention and efficiency. He arrived having been guided, it seems, for years on how to take care of himself and his body’s needs, and he never seems to veer off that. 

Mentally and intellectually, he has also made surprising, but intentional choices from the beginning. Staying at a Shaolin Temple in China for ten days last summer, studying Chan meditation, Shaolin Kung Fu, traditional Chinese medicine and more.

And arranging for a fans section in San Antonio, which he taught chants from Europe. Intentionality in everything he does. 

And as someone who has followed, analyzed and written about Luka Doncic for years – and even tried to bridge cultural gaps between Americans and Europeans so many times – I can’t help but wonder:

Where would Luka Doncic be if he was as prepared and well-guided, in as good of a situation and had a roster slowly and steadily built around him during his early years in the NBA?

Intentionality in everything you do seems to be a marker of success. Luka Doncic is one of the best basketball players in the world – if you know me, you know I’ve pushed for him to win MVP, especially in 2024 – and in my opinion, he is the best player in the world when he is healthy. 

But if you compare everything around that to Wemby’s approach, it’s already clear who comes out on top, despite Wemby only being in the league for a few years. 

Wembanyama clearly had better guidance coming into the league. He clearly learned to take care of himself early on at another level, too. He was clearly supported and lifted by being surrounded by people who he could trust, who have been able to make certain he ended up in the best situation possible. 

Luka Doncic had none of that early on, it seems. 

I know what you’re thinking right now. Doncic was drafted by an organization that didn’t put him in a similar development situation or roster construction effort as Wemby. And I agree with you. That is part of the point. On multiple levels Luka Doncic was not set up for success in the same way Wemby has been and still is. 

And that is the point. 

But despite lacking in all of this, Doncic still made it to where he is right now – and that’s pretty spectacular. Who knows if he still has a chance to win the MVP award and get a ring – he should and he deserves it – but he didn’t have much of the outside help that others did. 

And because of this, Wembanyama may win MVP before Luka Doncic. 

The absurdity of that sentence drives me nuts. When an acquaintance and fellow Danish journalist two years ago asked who would win it first, Luka or Wemby, I was perplexed. Luka was a superstar, among the best ever, Wemby was a rookie. 

But the reality is that Wemby was in the top three nominees for MVP this year, and Luka was not. He is leading a team in the Finals right now, and Luka is not. 

The absurdity of that situation after what Luka has done in Dallas with so little, and what he did to lead the Mavs to the Finals in 2024 haunts me. Many of us, I bet. 

But the world is full of absurdity, just look around. Sometimes we just have to laugh, because what else can we do? 

The fact remains, however. If Luka Doncic had had what Victor Wembanyama has, he would probably have reached the top already. Instead, he keeps fighting the same fight he has for five years in a cycle that just seems to repeat itself. 

Intentionality. Maybe that’s the cure against absurdity. It may be worth a shot. 

After Victor Wembanyama, the league will never be the same. The way he came into the league, almost fully ready and prepared to take care of his body and knowing exactly what he wanted, will set a precedent for future stars. And that’s a good thing for all of us. 

Find more Beyond Basketball pieces here.

You could call it a spirited gathering.

As Gotham’s team of the moment rallied to a nailbiting 107-106 Game 4 win over the San Antonio Spurs in the last 1.2 seconds Wednesday night, a watch party haunted an unusual — if not ghoulish — locale: Sparrow Contemporary Funeral Home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

The gathering drew about 75 Knicks fans-turned-funeral-home-guests, who savored the home team’s shocking recovery from a 29-point deficit within the parlor’s two service rooms, each space featuring a large projector screen, ample seating, and a spread of wine, beer, soda, chips and some appropriately orange and blue snacks. 

Perhaps Knicks fans from the great beyond even joined them in spirit?

Sparrow owner Erica Hill told The Post that she’d initially been shocked by the “micro-viral” response to her initial Instagram posts promoting the party — one featuring a Knicks logo and cheeky overlay text proclaiming, “We know a thing or two about loss.”

That said, Hill, who founded the boutique spot in November 2021, has never viewed her business as a site solely for the morose, having hosted book launches, meditative experiences, and even comedy shows in the open-concept space.

At the watch party, while the volume was more respectful than an unruly bar level, it was still a lively group — and why not?

“My whole thing is, why can’t a funeral home be more than a ‘death space?’” said Hill, who intentionally designed Sparrow with light-colored walls, contemporary artwork, and skylights to go against the dark, gloomy funeral home archetype. “Why can’t it be a community space, where [people] come together to do many things?”

It wasn’t the only unexpected venue with a pop-up party, either.

The mosque at the Islamic Center of New York City in the West Village expected about 100 fans for its own gathering Wednesday night. And Jersey City’s Liberty Science Center welcomed revelers to a raucous Game 4 “After Dark” bash inside the soaring, 89-foot dome at Jennifer Chalsty Planetarium, with plans for another this Saturday for what Knicks fans hope is the championship finale, with Jalen Brunson and crew now leading the series 3-1.

Funeral guru Hill has cheered in the Knicks’ journey through the team’s run, but she was really inspired to host her shindig after seeing the recent video of the Knicks’ Karl-Anthony “KAT” Towns in which the NBA standout spoke about feeling his late mother’s presence on the court during Game 1 of the finals.

In the viral interview, Towns — who lost his mother Jacqueline Cruz in April 2020 due to complications from COVID-19 — said that he felt “a calm and a peace” while playing, having felt like he was “seeing her in the stands.”

A deeply moved Hill lost her own father, a lifelong basketball fan and player, a few years prior.

“We live in a society that doesn’t like to talk about people who have died, our grief or our sadness,” said Hill. “And then you see this New York Knicks [player] talk about his mom and how clearly he felt her presence — I just thought that was so beautiful [and] to honor him, we should have our own watch party here.”

Knicks cap-wearing attendee Will Borowski, a 28-year-old grave digger and monument restoration worker at Brooklyn’s historic Green-Wood Cemetery, first learned about it through a friend, death doula Gabrielle Gatto, who attends regular professional meet-ups at Sparrow.

Borowski confessed that he thought the idea seemed more than a little “out there.”

But, ever-willing to try new things, the native Brooklynite and avid Knicks fan tagged along — and almost immediately felt that it was “everywhere [he] needed to be.”

“Being a grave digger, it starts out, like, ‘Oh, my God, there’s this family grieving their loved one,’” Borowski told The Post. “After a while, it all blends into one job that I have to do … I think being here puts that into perspective. Everyone’s here because they grew up knowing somebody who was a big fan of sports, and that person touched them in a way that left a lasting impact.”

Instead of a funeral guest sign-in book, though, a Knicks logo-emblazoned easel board titled “Who Are You Watching For?” awaited party-goers, who added the names of departed loved ones who were dedicated sports fans.

For Borowski, that person was his uncle Kevin.

“He’s always someone I’ve sort of kept in my heart since he passed — we would always B.S. about why teams were doing well, why they weren’t doing well,” said Borowski. “He was the first person I thought of when I walked in here.”

For 32-year-old Gatto, who also works at Green-Wood, attending the event was a no-brainer.

On the board, she honored her uncle Vinnie, a firefighter and captain of Bed-Stuy’s FDNY Engine Company 235 who died of 9/11-related cancer.

“He would have loved this because he really lived life to the fullest,” Gatto told The Post. “His number one thing was to show up and be weird and see who falls in love with you because of that, and I think that’s what’s happening right here, right now.”

Sara Donnellan, a 31-year-old writer, checked out the party with her husband, Drummond Dominguez-Kincannon, after a friend initially shared the funeral home’s Instagram post with her as a joke. Having attended one of the home’s comedy shows in years past, she remembered being “impressed” by the warm environment and the unique way that Sparrow aimed to demystify death.

Dominguez-Kincannon, on the other hand, was a bit more hesitant when she asked whether he wanted to go.

“I was, like, ‘I don’t know, do I?'” Dominguez-Kincannon told The Post.

However, after his wife explained Sparrow’s mission, he quickly changed his tune.

“I’d thought, OK, that’s pretty cool,” Dominguez-Kincannon recalled. “I won’t be walking into a gloomy space … When I walked in, I was, like, all right — vibes seem high.”

More than anything, attending a Knicks party at a funeral home made the couple reflect on how grief and joy can often walk hand-in-hand — and at their best, bring the community together.

“I like the idea of coming into spaces like this, not just for a loved one passing,” said Sara. “Just recognizing that it doesn’t have to be this scary space — it can be just like any other place in the community that opens up doors.”