The vibes inside Madison Square Garden were immaculate on ring evening, with the first banner in 53 years going up to the rafters, the sudden look of an NBA Cup 2025 championship banner, Jalen Brunson getting his deserved love, OG Anunoby getting the second-loudest ovation (historic tip-ins will do that), and the crowd barking at coach Mike Brown (who has an odd love for the track “Who Let the Dogs Out”). Even a loss to the 76ers did not spoil the temper much.
But proprietor James Dolan is attempting to. Dolan still hasn’t sprung for the rings for the Knicks assistant coaches, who acquired empty ring packing containers during the ceremony and did not open them, a story damaged by Joe Varden at The Athletic. It’s also unclear whether head coach Mike Brown got his ring.
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Seven league sources, all talking on situation of anonymity so they could speak freely about a delicate matter, said the Knicks assistant coaches did not get rings on banner evening. Two of those sources advised The Athletic that the assistants discovered earlier Tuesday that they would not be getting their rings that night, which came as no shock because they had not yet been fitted for one and that packing containers without their rings were a late addition to the ceremony.
Those coaches are at numerous ranges of pissed off — and they have every proper to be. It’s also price noting that assistant coaches do not always get their rings on ring evening — the Thunder assistants did not last yr. However, for most groups, they get their rings that evening, but at least they’ll get them. Someday.
Tradition with championship groups is that a quantity of the groups’ employees also get rings — faces you know, like the broadcast crew, but also the people who do the exhausting work on the business aspect of the operation as nicely. Usually, deeper in the crew employees, those rings do not have all 80+ diamonds and all the baubles, but they get actual, significant rings.
Not in New York. With the Knicks, those people not only did not get rings — they got a phishing rip-off about the rings.
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Those Madison Square Garden workers got their hopes up at the finish of September when the Knicks despatched an e-mail to a long record of workers, which gave recipients a first glimpse at their would-be championship rings. Atop the e-mail, a copy of which The Athletic has obtained, was a graphic of two in a different way styled rings…
But the e-mail was a fake-out, a phishing check Madison Square Garden despatched to see if those workers would click on, a number of crew sources said.
Clicking the hyperlink in the phishing rip-off meant those workers got to go to a cybersecurity class. Congratulations!
Viewers of the ring evening ceremony on NBC and Peacock may also have seen that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who normally addresses the crowd and shakes gamers’ arms as they get their rings, did neither. That’s just the newest installment of the long-running feud between Dolan and Silver.
Ring evening in New York was still particular, but only Dolan could discover a means to take a little shine off the occasion to save a few bucks.
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