NBA Insider with Ken Berger

Madison Square Garden’s response to the incident Monday in which three reporters were stopped from interviewing a fan who had been ejected from the Knicks-Celtics game is predictable: further restrictions on the media attempting to cover the Knicks.

Reporters who already are subjected to having every interview with a Knicks player, coach or official monitored by a member of the media relations staff will now be forbidden to roam in the area under the stands directly behind celebrity row without permission and an escort from the media relations staff, according to Barry Watkins, MSG’s vice president of public relations.

This “back-of-the-house” area, as Watkins referred to it Wednesday, will be off-limits to reporters unless they make a specific request to interview a specific person during a game. (And of course, unless that request is approved.)

This is disappointing on a number of levels. First, the security staff that converged on myself, Marc Berman of the Post, and Dave Waldstein of the Star-Ledger Monday are being rewarded for handling the situation poorly.

Second, a lot of good interviews have taken place in this rotunda behind the tunnel leading from the court on the opposite side of the arena from the team benches. Ian O’Connor and I interviewed Magic Johnson in that very area at halftime of the Knicks-Suns game on Dec. 2. This sort of access to the basketball luminaries and other celebrities that frequent Knicks games adds depth to the coverage of what is supposed to be the flagship franchise in the NBA.

That is where Berman, Waldstein, myself, and several other reporters were waiting at halftime Monday. We had hoped to interview members of the Giants who attended the game and sat in the prime celebrity seats in the front row. Our attempt wasn’t successful, as a member of the Knicks’ media relations staff whisked the players away after a couple of questions, saying they had to return to their seats.

As I outlined in a previous post, most of the reporters returned to the game. Berman, Waldstein, and I noticed a fan having a confrontation with security. Being reporters, we stuck around to see what was going on.

It became clear that the fan, Ozzie Jones of Brooklyn, was being ejected for unruly behavior. I don’t want to bore you with the details – they’re all outlined in my blog post and in Berman’s column in the Post today – but suffice it to say that as we followed the fan into what I learned today is called the “back-of-the-house area,” we were surrounded by a phalanx of security people as though we were the ones acting unruly and being ejected.

One of the best things about covering the NBA is the tremendous access that is available to reporters. You can talk freely with players, coaches, team execs and the like after practices, during morning shootarounds, during the pre-game availability, and after games. Imagine being in the Giants’ locker room 90 minutes before the Super Bowl. That is what you get to do when you cover the NBA.

That’s what I did while covering the Spurs-Cavs in the Finals last June, when I was able to gather useful information in the San Antonio locker room and interview Spurs legend David Robinson just outside the room less than an hour before a Finals game.

The Spurs are one of the many NBA franchises that handle the media with openness and respect. It not only makes the job a pleasure, it enhances the information we are able to relay to you – the readers and fans who support both the newspaper business and the sports business.

As long as newspapers embrace and take advantage of this access, that will continue. As newspapers shrink from attempts to limit our access and flat-out turn down access to events and athletes you care about, we make ourselves irrelevant. As Kurt Vonnegut used to say, so it goes.

The Knicks have taken the most restrictive approach possible to the openness that enhances coverage of the NBA in every city but the one that should be the biggest and most important in the league. The most interesting detail that emerged from the now-famous New York Observer story about the Knicks’ ongoing turf war with the media was this quote from Howard Beck of The New York Times:

“Everyone is so worried about upsetting Jim Dolan, or getting fired, and as a result people aren’t themselves,” Beck said in the article. “If you transplanted the same individuals and put them in another city, then they’d be far more interesting. They’d be themselves.”

This quote applies to the security guards and ushers who work at the Garden. It applies to the media relations staffers and executives who work for Dolan. And it applies to every player who puts on a Knicks uniform and every coach and executive who works for the Knicks.

As much as you may dislike Stephon Marbury or Isiah Thomas, keep this in mind: It’s not the people, it’s the place. You would like these people a lot more if the place were different – or if they were someplace else.

I don’t believe in turning fans into celebrities when they have behaved in such as way as to give up their rights to cheer. But when goons converge on professional journalists who are merely trying to do their job, and when obtuse media rules turn the players and coaches you are supposed to be rooting for into paranoid robots, I get upset.

When the Knicks’ media relations staffer cut off our interview with the Giants’ R.W. McQuarters on Monday, I cracked a joke to the other writers. Not only are the Knicks monitoring our reporting activities with the Knicks, I said, they’re monitoring our reporting activities with every other team in New York.

It would have been funny, except that it’s true.

I can’t wait until David Stern attends a Knicks game and reporters try to interview him in the “back-of-the-house” area. I hope Stern gives the back of his hand to anyone who tries to stop it.