The World’s Most Invasive Arena

 A new reason for opposing players to fear MSG.

The New York Knicks won Game 4 of their first-round series in Atlanta over the weekend, evening the series after a Game 3 loss had put them in a 2-1 hole and helped them become the first team to lose consecutive playoff games by one point.

Even with an even series returning to Madison Square Garden, there’s still a sense of unease around the team as they look to recover from trailing in a first round series for the first time in the Jalen Brunson era. The narratives will certainly rise earlier than previous years if the Knicks can’t take care of business against the Hawks: Mike Brown can’t coach. Mikal Bridges doesn’t want it enough. Karl-Anthony Towns is too soft. Jalen Brunson is too small. The refs hate us. Etcetera.

I’m not sweating things yet, but say the Knicks lose this series. S’gonna hurt, huh? Then what? What’s a fan to do? Can’t fire the owner. Got no say on coaching hirings and firings. Didn’t care for a trade or a signing? Nobody asked. Stay in your lane. Spend your money. Trust the process. Trust the powers that be.

If you’re an NBA fan, you’re familiar with your place in the hierarchy. Whenever a work stoppage nears, the owners cry poverty, a new deal is struck, they all get wealthier and many players get richer. And the fans? The foundation of all that material gain? What do we get from every spanking new CBA? 

Bupkis.

Ticket prices go up. Parking and concessions go up. Think you can escape the rip-offs watching from home? Inflation’s even got passive resistance costing more. Cable costs always going up. Streaming prices always going up. The NBA: it’s fan-tastic.

I didn’t see Game 1 or Game 3 of the Atlanta series because I don’t have Prime. Game 2 was on NBC. Game 4 was on Peacock, owned by NBC but not the same thing. I used to watch the first round on MSG, on a screen that actually showed me what was happening live. Now we’re supposed to subscribe to a half-dozen streaming services, each of which subjects viewers to pixelated buffering that makes it look like we’re watching Double Dribble.

I hear you, stick-to-sportsies! “Stop crying and get Prime. Drop it once the Knicks are done.” Or “There’s a million streams out there.” Both true. Both wrong.

Knick owner James Dolan is the subject of a recent deep-dive by Wired on his use of digital surveillance to turn Madison Square Garden, an unofficial public landmark, into the world’s most expensive and exclusive peep show. The article is worth your time, and Wired your money (more than Prime), if for no other reason than revealing the extent to which Dolan sees you, me, Dupree and 99% of us as serfs in his fiefdom. And not merely in the widely-known, disturbingly accepted “the rich are different than you and me” version.

Dolan is, apparently, an equal opportunity voyeur, spying on both the poors and the rich; former Knicks reportedly warn newcomers to the team their rooms are bugged. This quote hit harder than most, from a current MSG security team member: “You can't look at Mr. Dolan when he's walking past. No, you can't look at him.” That same worker was also told by bosses – remember, this man is paid to provide security – “You're too close to One — that's what we call Mr. Dolan, ‘Executive One.’”

If Dolan is comfortable betraying the trust of the Knick players by bugging their rooms, people he ostensibly cares about, if only out of financial self-interest, and comfortable acting like Hirohito in 1940 Japan, even with those paid to protect his life, what would he be willing to do to people he doesn’t know or care about? Given his history aggressively confronting, insulting and suing fans, a picture forms.

I said the security team member’s words hit harder than most because the hardest came from current and former MSG employees exposing the Garden’s digital stalking of a trans woman who befriended multiple Knicks over the years. These employees say the woman never posed a threat to the players, yet MSG security chief John Eversole ordered cameras to follow everything she did – nefarious acts such as hugging an usher, buying a drink and watching a basketball game. Doesn’t add up, until you read Eversole alternated between misgendering Ms. Richards and calling her “it.”  

Madison Square Garden reminds us ad nauseum it prides itself on its best-in-class entertainment and customer service. But customers aren’t asked if they consent to having their biometric data scanned and stored. The Wired piece offers compelling evidence that not only is the quantity of the surveillance worse than was known, so is its quality. 

The real Mecca is a sacred place. In Dolan’s Mecca, a nine-year-old girl isn’t allowed in to see a Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall. Her crime? Her mom worked with someone who’d “pissed him off.” An even younger girl was identified at Dolan’s Las Vegas Sphere as a “priority 8” threat. 

Bigots running dumb tech to quench the fears of a man who won’t walk the length of a single city block alone, for reasons so obvious I don’t need to write them? C’est la vie.

If the Knicks lose to the Hawks, heads will roll. Our gallows humor will imagine the scope and scale of what an angered Dolan might do in response. He fired Tom Thibodeau after the most successful Knick season in a quarter-century, and has been crystal clear anything short of the Finals this season is failure. Why wouldn’t he fire Brown for coming up shorter? Maybe Steve Kerr jumps from one coast to the other. Maybe Leon Rose makes someone we’d never think would come here an offer they can’t refuse. 

I can believe in whatever move they make and buy into the Knicks even more next season. I can shrug my shoulders and wonder how any coach can win with two stars whose defense is relentlessly and ruthlessly exploited by playoff teams. I can say, “That’s it, I’ve had it. I give up.” It’s my choice. 

What’s happening at MSG with digital spying is one man’s choice, one that affects millions without them having any say. If that logic sounds familiar, James Dolan has counted Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein as friends. Take a moment if you need to. Uh-huh. Exactly.

Remember all the fan placards teams put up in the visible seats when games first resumed during COVID? At the time they reminded me of Ebenezer Scrooge waking up Christmas morning, after his night with the three ghosts, finally having seen the light. I’d hoped the NBA, seeing how its product hit without fans – weak – had seen the light, and a new appreciation was a-comin’. Spoiler: nah-uh.

I see fans in San Antonio wearing different colored shirts, not only provided but encouraged by the club for them to wear. I remember the placards. I read my team’s owner, who opened MSG up for a convention of racists to insult millions of New Yorkers, who has an enemies list so long it makes Nixon’s read like a fortune cookie, is secretly spying on everyone who walks into the building. A place where Charles Oakley’s not welcome, but neo-Nazis are. A place that will gladly take my non-binary ass’s money to spy on my brother-sisters.

The Knicks feed my spirit. Dolan’s peeping-tom panopticon hurts my soul. There’s a million streams out there. If the water keeps trying to drown me, I’m strong enough to stand on my own and find something better. We all are.