Brian Rivel’s first seats as a New York Knicks season ticket holder 35 years ago were up in the Madison Square Garden rafters, beneath championship banners from an era that now feels mythical. He and his late father decided to buy the package in 1991, a day after the franchise hired legendary coach Pat Riley. For the next decade, Rivel watched a series of good-but-not-quite-good-enough Knicks teams fall agonizingly short in the postseason, thwarted by Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and Hakeem Olajuwon’s Houston Rockets. After the Knicks’ most recent NBA Finals appearance, in 1999, Rivel saw his favorite team go from perennial playoff contender to leaguewide laughingstock. Still, Rivel said he never considered dropping the package. And besides, there was at least one silver lining to all the futility: As the team drifted further from its last NBA championship in 1973, he gradually upgraded to a spot mere steps from the hardwood.
“When the Knicks were bad, people didn’t renew so there were seats available,” said Rivel, the chairman and CEO of a consulting firm who lives in Westport, Connecticut. “Every year, I just kept moving up.” Rivel’s patience — and financial commitment — were ultimately rewarded. Today, he is the owner of four seats in Section 107, a premium center-court perch, where he has witnessed the Knicks’ revival in recent years, and where he now has the opportunity to watch the first Finals games in the Garden in more than a quarter-century.
