NEW YORK (AP) — Think basketball is bad in New York now? Marv Albert remembers when fans would go to Madison Square Garden and wouldn't even stick around to watch the Knicks.
The days of NBA doubleheaders there are long gone — a good thing, so both of New York's bumbling ballclubs can't lose at the same place on the same day.
Fans in the Big Apple remain just as passionate about good basketball as they were then, when the chance to see someone like Bill Russell made the opening act the main event. They get their chance this weekend when the NBA All-Star festivities come to town, and locals say the enthusiasm can't be diminished no matter how many games the Knicks or Nets have lost.
"I don't think it matters because you have all these great stars coming there and I think it's going to be a wild scene, both Saturday in Brooklyn and then Sunday at the Garden," said Albert, a New York native and longtime Knicks broadcaster who will call the game on TNT.
Breaking from what had become standard procedure of taking the mid-winter showcase to a warm-weather city, the NBA decided to stay home in 2015 and show off two of its flashiest arenas: Brooklyn's Barclays Center, opened in 2012, and famed Madison Square Garden, recently renovated over the course of three years, and both with $1 billion price tags.
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