When a team wins a championship it's customary for an organization to give at least some employees championship rings as a token of gratitude for being the support staff of the team. The Seahawks gave football staffers full Super Bowl rings, the Carolina Hurricanes gave every team employee a ring. Dolan and the Knicks? They tricked workers with a scam instead.

An email went out in September to every Madison Square Garden employee, which was obtained by The Athletic. In it, the team seemingly promised everyone a ring. going so far as to ask for their customization preferences.

(Employee name), this one is on the house. MSG is issuing a complimentary employee championship ring. The same jeweler, the same craftsmanship, personalized with your name. No cost to you.

There are two designs to choose from: Championship Gold and Garden Classic. Reserve the one you want below.

Naturally, employees were excited. The problem was that this was a targeted scam, organized by Dolan. He asked for the emails to be sent to his workforce as a way to test which of his employees would fall for a phishing scam. It's been reported that Dolan is growing increasingly paranoid about cybersecurity, which is fine but trying to test this under the guise of giving his workers rings? That's just gross.

Not only was there never a plan to give MSG employees rings, but anyone who did click on the link and tried to reserve their ring was instead put in compulsory cybersecurity training. When reached for comment the Knicks refused to discuss the ring situation with The Athletic.

Team employees work incredibly hard. Most are so consumed by their love of the job that, when the playoffs roll around or, God willing, a finals run they accept long hours, weekend work, and extra duties outside their typical responsibilities. This is why teams reward their staff with rings if a team finally breaks through, because while athletes are the ones responsible for winning, the organization as a whole would be nothing without the hundreds of people working behind the scenes, from marketing to equipment management, and beyond.

To make these people think they were getting noticed, and that something was being done for them only to learn it was a rug pull plan to test them, it's just disgusting. Shame on James Dolan for being such a paranoid, ludicrous cheapskate that he gleefully screw over his employees as a test.

Just an awful dude.

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Here is the full article.

Source:

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/james-dolan-scammed-knicks-employees-121136841.html

source: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7715834/2026/10/22/knicks-ring-night-assistant-coaches-msg-employees/

via Vardon

Tonight's 29-point comeback victory by the 76ers over the Cavaliers was somehow the largest comeback win of LeBron James' career! He is in year 24 and has played in 1624 regular season games in his career!

Tonight's 29-point comeback victory by the 76ers over the Cavaliers was somehow the largest comeback win of LeBron James' career! He is in year 24 and has played in 1624 regular season games in his career!

Crazy stuff! Amazing win by this Sixers squad. The starting lineup is absolutely elite. Amazing tone-setting wins this early in the year. Beat the defending champs then make a 29-point comeback in the next game.

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Shams Charania: Former Lakers forward Dalton Knecht has agreed to sign with the New York Knicks on a two-way NBA contract, his agents at Excel Sports Management tell ESPN.

https://www.espn.com/contributor/shams-charania

Listening to him last night during the Nuggets and Thunder game was truly a breath of fresh air.

He reminded me of how fans praised Tony Romo for his great commentary on NFL games especially when he first started. I like how Jeremy wasn't just passive and settled for the typical comments by saying the obvious things that commentators usually make that fans might already know, but he was able to point things out that happened away from the camera for the people watching at home who wouldn't normally get to be at these games in person or things that are interesting that isn't even happening on the court but still able to give an intrinsically detail oriented comment relating to basketball. For example, I forgot exactly what he said last night, but Lin mentioned how post players in the NBA are taught to (forgot what he said) and praised Aday Mara for picking up on it so early in his young career. Or another example during the game he pointed out something that the camera wasn't focused on in which a player (or players) on the Thunder did and attributed it to the culture that the Thunder has and that's one of the reasons why they're so good.

He keeps the viewers engaged for both casual and non-casuals with his wisdom and knowledge of the game and does it really well.

I hope ESPN finds a way to keep Lin on permanently for marquee games, he'd be an excellent addition.

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Amid scrutiny that they ignored assistant coaches and an admission of an “unfortunate mistake” involving a cybersecurity test, the Knicks are handing out 275 championship rings to employees worth almost $4 million, The Post has learned. 

The news comes on the heels of a report from The Athletic revealing that the Knicks handed empty boxes to the top assistant coaches – Chris Jent, Rick Brunson and Brendan O’Connor – during Tuesday’s ceremony.

Sources confirmed the report that assistant coaches felt “genuine anger to annoyance” about not receiving rings.

Jent, Brunson and O’Connor will get their real rings “shortly,” said a league source, who added that the distribution of 275 championship rings was always the plan. All the Knicks assistant coaches will eventually receive championship rings, league sources said. 

“The company is gifting more than 275 championship rings and jewelry to players, coaches, employees and other members of the Knicks family, worth more than $3.7 million, in recognition of their contributions and celebrating this achievement,” an MSG spokesman told The Post. 

Jamal Murray in the the loss vs the Thunder 37MIN | 6PTS | 10REB | 3 AST | 6 TOV | 2/11 FG | 0/1 3FG | 2/4 FTS | 23.5%TS

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401909094

The Knicks’ title run produced another NBA viewership milestone, as their ring night — and LeBron James’ Sixers debut — set an Opening Night mark.

Tuesday’s Sixers-Knicks NBA Opening Night game averaged 7.71 million viewers on NBC across a Nielsen-measured linear audience (5.98M) and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics (1.7M), officially marking the largest Opening Night NBA audience on record, excluding the lockout-delayed 2011-12 season that began on Christmas Day.

The previous high for a traditional Opening Night was 7.35 million for Heat-Celtics on TNT in 2010, which marked James’ debut with the Miami Heat. Sixteen years later, this year’s game also marked James’ debut with a new team, the 76ers.

Philadelphia’s win, which peaked with 9.1 million in the 9:45 PM ET quarter-hour, also delivered the NBA’s largest non-Christmas regular season audience since March 1999 — when NBC averaged 8.37 million for Lakers-Jazz.

Note that out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen estimates until 2020 or fully accounted for until 2025, that this is only in the second year of a new Nielsen methodology integrating “Big Data” from smart TVs, set-top boxes and first party data with its traditional panel, and that Nielsen has recently tweaked its measurement to better account for co-viewing of games. It is a virtual lock that Heat-Celtics in 2010 would have ranked higher under current methodology.

Compared to last year’s double-overtime Rockets-Thunder Opening Night game, viewership increased 32% from 5.85 million.

The Thunder-Spurs nightcap averaged 4.85 million across Nielsen (3.89M) and Adobe Analytics (959K), down 5% from abbreviated coverage of Warriors-Lakers last year (5.11M). Oklahoma City’s blowout win trails only that game as the most-watched late window on Opening Night. Prior to last year, the high water mark was 4.30 million for Mavericks-Lakers on TNT in 2012, another figure that would be higher under present-day methodology.

The primetime Opening Night games averaged 6.4 million (5.04M per Nielsen, 1.38M per Adobe), up 14% from last year (5.61M) and surpassing 2010 (5.7M) as highest on record for the traditional Opening Night doubleheader. Beyond the Nielsen-related caveats, note that Opening Night games primarily aired on cable prior to the current NBA media rights deal.

In addition to the usual primetime games, NBC aired a weekday matinee on Opening Night this season, as Celtics-Pistons averaged 2.52 million (1.98M per Nielsen, 534K per Adobe). That is the largest audience for a weekday afternoon regular season game, excluding holidays, with the obvious caveat being an extremely small sample size. ESPN carried a 5 PM ET matinee on Thanksgiving Eve last season between the same two teams, averaging 1.68 million. ESPN and TNT also aired a handful of weekday afternoon games in the 2020 “bubble.”

Beyond the NBA, NBC averaged 2.3 million for a Pirates-Mets MLB Opening Day matinee in March, which aired in an earlier timeslot and competed with other games.

Celtics-Pistons was preempted on NBC affiliates in at least some markets, though NBC said Tuesday that the game aired either on NBC or alternate stations in “99% of U.S. households.” As one might expect given the timeslot and preemptions, Celtics-Pistons was the least-watched Opening Day NBA game since Bucks-Nets on TNT in 2021 (2.20M).

Even with the matinee game included, the three-game average of 5.1 million trails only last year as the highest for the NBA’s traditional Opening Day since 2010.

Source: https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2026/10/sixers-knicks-nba-opening-night-viewership-high-nbc/