“Marcus and ‘Spree’ I hadn’t seen in 20, 25 years,” Larry Johnson said, summing up how sudden the Knicks’ new courtside cast feels to some of its members. Johnson, one of several former players gathering at a designated baseline section, calls the group Alumni Row.
The gathering is not informal. The New York Knicks began reserving 14 courtside baseline seats for former players during the 2023-24 season, and the block of seats drew fresh notice during the 2025 Eastern Conference finals against the Indiana Pacers. Former Knicks such as John Starks, Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson, Allan Houston and Stephon Marbury were seen cheering together as the team chased its first NBA title since 1973.
Walt Frazier, another regular in the row, described what the organization has assembled plainly: “It’s like a family reunion with what the Knicks are doing at home games.” He added, “It’s very rewarding that they appreciate what we’ve done in the past and what we have meant to the team. They are not forgetting us with the team success. They’ve made us a part of it. … All the decades are represented. And they know the struggle.”
John Starks, who the Knicks hired as an alumni and fan development advisor in 2004, said the seats changed the dynamic. “I sit down there, Larry sits down there, and a few guys sit down there when they’re in town,” he said. “The excitement we were generating down there going back to the Indiana series, I think everyone kind of picked up on that. TV picked up on us getting up, cheering the team on, and it kind of grew out of that. It showed that these guys are still valuable to the organization. [So the Knicks] keep bringing them back.”
The visible roster of former Knicks spans generations — players who starred in the 1960s and 1970s through veterans as recent as Carmelo Anthony from the 2010s. The block of 14 seats creates a concentrated foreground at games, putting past players in the same frame as current stars and celebrity courtside attendees. The arrangement has amplified applause and produced televised moments that feed into the postseason narrative.
But the reunion is partly a work in progress. While some veterans had not crossed paths in decades, Johnson also noted reconnections are recent: “I saw Marcus and Spree last year.” He said Chris Childs “started coming back this year,” and that Charlie Ward “attended a couple games this year.” Johnson added that he hadn’t seen Kurt Thomas in 20–25 years as well. Those gaps underline that Alumni Row is as much an organized reconvening as it is a continuous tradition.
That friction matters because it reframes the seats not only as a gesture of homage but as an active effort to reweave the franchise’s past into its present. The Knicks have long hosted celebrity courtside crowds, but the alumni seating expansion in recent seasons intentionally elevated former players alongside entertainers and public figures. For spectators and broadcasters, the grouping has become a story beat in its own right during a postseason run.
The immediate consequence is tangible: former players provide audible crosstalk and visible endorsement, a human link between the franchise’s history and its current playoff push. The larger consequence is unresolved. The Knicks’ decision to reserve 14 baseline seats began in 2023-24 and peaked for viewers during the 2025 Eastern Conference finals, but the team has not confirmed whether Alumni Row will be permanent or scaled back in future seasons.
The most consequential open question now is simple and practical: will the organization keep those 14 seats reserved as a standing feature of home games, or will Alumni Row fade back into occasional appearances? The answer will determine whether these reunions remain episodic highlights of a playoff run or become a lasting fixture that reshapes how knicks players — past and present — appear together in the arena.
