When Adam Turk first started earning a paycheck, purchasing Knicks season tickets was almost automatic.
“My partner and I got Knicks tickets before we had any clients,” the Brooklyn-born lawyer told The Post. “They were terrible, and we knew if we didn’t get them at that time when we could afford them, we never would.”
The lifelong New Yorker has held his season tickets for 20 years and says there is no price he’ll sell for — no matter what the tickets are worth to other die-hard fans.
Turk revealed to The Post that he shelled out $23,000 for the regular season and an additional $26,000 for the playoff games.
Season ticket-holders are charged per playoff game, so he got a bit of a break when the Knicks swept the Cleveland Cavaliers in only four games.
“I’m not following the market, but I’m almost scared to look on StubHub because that would make me feel bad that I’m not selling,” he said, although he did hear that tickets in his section are currently going for a whopping $15,000 a seat for Game 3.
“I’ll never regret going, but I will regret selling,” Turk told The Post. “I have season tickets for moments like this.”
Another lifelong Knicks fan, who wanted to remain anonymous, revealed his father-in-law spent $10,000 on four Game 3 tickets — as a special treat to surprise his 8-year-old grandson.
“The 90s Knicks fandom for me meant a lot for my family and me,” the 44-year-old Brooklynite said. “My son, who is now 8, started loving the Knicks at 6-years-old.”
He told The Post he was blown away by his father-in-law’s deep-pocketed gesture and revealed that he helped pull off the surprise.
“I went on the fan presale [last week] and luckily bought directly, which was still very expensive,” he told The Post.
The tickets were “$2,400 in the 200s in the corner,” he shared. “Not the worst seats in the house, but not great seats,” he added.
“We realize it’s ridiculous. But I’m hoping this will be a memory for my son forever.”
When gifting their son the special gift from his grandfather, “He opened the envelope, his eyes bulged and he screamed and danced. It was great,” the proud father told The Post.
“He’s very young but he seems to really get how significant it is for so many people.”
12-year-old Carmelo Rios, another youngster who understands the magnitude of having the opportunity to see the Knicks play in person, recently went viral on TikTok for his reaction to being gifted Playoff tickets from his mom.
The average ticket sold for Games 3 and 4 at the Garden is currently $7,149, making Game 3 the most expensive game in NBA Finals history.
And as of right now, the cheapest seat in the house is going for $9,006 — and that’s for the limited view upper bowl, according to SeatGeek.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani shelled out “nearly $1,000” for a standing-room-only ticket for Monday night’s game.
And fans hoping to sit courtside are facing an even more jaw-dropping price tag.
While those seats aren’t listed on resale platforms, the highest bid currently submitted through the NBA’s premium ticket program stands at a whopping $500,000.
But for sisters Kylie Richo, 24, and Kennedy Richo, 22, the soaring costs weren’t enough to stop them from giving their lifelong Knicks-loving father the surprise of a lifetime.
The West Virginia natives pooled their money to buy a $1,200 StubHub ticket for their father, Harry Richo, 51, and flew him from Orlando, Florida, to San Antonio, Texas, to watch Game 1 on his birthday.
The seat wasn’t quite in the nosebleeds’ top row, but in the second section from the top.
The sisters originally hoped to send their father to a game at Madison Square Garden, but quickly realized that the dream was out of reach thanks to soaring prices.
Instead, they turned their attention to Texas.
By the time airfare ($300 per flight there and back), a hotel room ($400 for one night), Uber rides ($67 each) and ticket insurance ($62) were added up, the birthday surprise cost the sisters more than $2,300.
Still, Kylie said it was worth every penny and captured their dad’s shocked reaction in a now-viral TikTok video.
“We told him to take a closer look inside his birthday gift bag, and that’s when he found the ticket hidden beneath the Knicks T-shirt we got him,” she recalled. “He was completely shocked.”
The duo certainly faced a few bumps in the road when snagging this $1,200 ticket.
It wasn’t transferred to their father’s account until roughly two hours before tipoff.
“We were so scared we got scammed, and that he’d get all the way to the arena in San Antonio and not be able to get in,” Kylie recalled.
But it worked out — and Harry boarded a flight the morning of the game, cheered alongside fellow Knicks faithful in San Antonio that night, and flew back home the next day.
“He said it was completely worth it,” Kylie said. “He was so excited and sent our whole family live, real-time updates in our group chat, as well as photos of Timothée Chalamet who was across the stadium from him.”
Richo’s family isn’t alone.
In another recent viral video, Knicks fans were asked outside Madison Square Garden by Front Office Sports how much they paid for Game 2 tickets.
One woman said she spent $16,000 on two tickets, while a group of three men said they paid $750 each. Another attendee said he paid $2,000 for a single ticket.
As StubHub confirmed to The Post, Knicks Finals tickets at MSG are selling for roughly five times the price of Eastern Conference Finals tickets at the same venue just weeks ago, nearly eight times the cost of the Eastern Conference semifinals and approximately 16 times the price of a regular-season Knicks home game.
About 46% of purchasers for Games 3 and 4 are from outside the state, while 28% are coming from beyond the tri-state area, according to the online marketplace.
“What we’re seeing isn’t a broader NBA Finals surge, it’s specifically a 27-year-drought, Madison Square Garden phenomenon,” Jill Gonzalez, StubHub’s Head of Consumer, Product and Tech Communications, told The Post.
“The data is pointing squarely at scarcity, because it’s a generational fixed supply constraint colliding with the most concentrated local-market demand we’ve seen for any 2026 sporting event.”
For many fans, however, the astronomical costs aren’t about basketball alone.
The Knicks haven’t appeared in the NBA Finals since 1999. They haven’t won a championship since 1973.
That means millions of New Yorkers have never seen the franchise compete for a title in their lifetime.
And for fans who have waited decades, the chance to witness history is proving priceless — even when the tickets aren’t.
