The San Antonio Spurs are hosting the New York Knicks at the Frost Bank Center tonight for Game 5 of the NBA Finals with a chance to extend the series to a potential Game 6 or 7. Or we could also very likely witness the Knicks win their first championship tonight since 1973.
Therefore, in such a do-or-die situation, the people of San Antonio should have been the ones swarming the building as the Spurs needed every fan in the arena tonight to be cheering for them. Keeping the unruly nature of the Knicks fans and their tendencies to travel and take over a game on the road, the Spurs ticket office initially decided to revoke all the tickets that had been issued to people outside of San Antonio.
However, the Spurs later decided to allow the Knicks fans to attend the game. And from hours before tip-off, the Knicks fans began swarming the seats and turned the Frost Bank Center into exactly what the Spurs feared they would: a hostile atmosphere for the home team.
Knicks fans booing Wemby in San Antonio 😳
Game 5 on 8:30 ET on ABC and the ESPN App! pic.twitter.com/wYeNDloBEr
— ESPN (@espn) June 14, 2026
Before tip-off, Shaquille O’Neal sat down with the crew of Inside the NBA and voiced his opinion on the Spurs’ decision.
“If this is my team, somebody in the ticket office is getting fired,” said O’Neal.
A security guard at the Frost Bank Center was reportedly overheard saying that the Spurs were prepared to treat tonight like a game at a hostile arena.
“They told us in our meeting it’s basically going to be a New York Knicks home game,” he reportedly said.
This is not the first time that the Knicks fans have taken over another team’s arena. Earlier this season, when the Knicks faced the 76ers in the second round, New York fans filled the arena when the games were at Philadelphia’s Xfinity Mobile Arena.
But the difference in that case was that Philadelphia is a two-hour drive from New York. Meanwhile, they would need almost a five-hour flight to travel to San Antonio.
Moreover, the Knicks fans, who were not able to afford the exorbitant tickets for the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden, may have made alternative arrangements to attend this game.
Looking at the extent to which the Spurs fans were made to feel threatened for their lives in New York, it was understandable that the Spurs franchise initially wanted to keep Game 5 limited to their fans. But keeping the all-inclusive spirit of sports in mind, the Spurs reopened their doors for Knicks fans to attend Game 5.
Additionally, from Shaquille O’Neal’s words, it seems he would have preferred a clear-cut policy that should have been decided earlier, instead of scrambling and making last-minute decisions like this.
Where O’Neal stands on his opinion of Knicks fans is still unclear, but he certainly feels that the Spurs’ ticket office could have managed this better as their team tries to climb back from a 3-1 deficit. It will be interesting to see the impact of this hostile crowd on San Antonio’s performance tonight.
