Anthony Rieber: Knicks' postseason games make for rough time on Prime

There might not be a Knicks fan alive who is happy the team’s playoff opener against Atlanta on Saturday night was shown only on Amazon Prime Video.

Things just keep getting worse when it comes to finding and paying for your favorite team’s big games because of the explosion of streaming channels.

Some of you probably remember another vexing problem: when the Knicks’ first NBA championship-clinching game in 1970 — the famous “Willis Reed Game” — was shown on a three-hour tape delay on Ch. 7 in New York.

People can’t wait three seconds today to find out what’s going on in an arena or stadium. Imagine waiting three hours? The radio broadcast of that game, featuring a 28-year-old Marv Albert, was a must-listen in the Big Apple.

“At the time,” Albert told Newsday in 2020, “we were told it was the largest radio audience for a sports event probably in the history of the country.”

But huddling around the radio is not what fans want to do in 2026.

So which is worse: No TV option to watch live, as in 1970, or one option that might force you to have to sign up for yet another streamer in 2026?

Yankees fans know all about Prime Video because the streamer replaced Ch. 11 as the YES Network’s alternative “channel” starting in 2021. Prime Video is carrying 21 Yankees games in 2026.

The production values are good because all Amazon is doing is using the YES Network crew and announcers and slapping a Prime Video label on it. But every Yankees fan who watches the Prime Video games knows how annoying it is to switch out of that app and to watch something else on a different app. Eventually you give up and stay with Prime Video and maybe even watch the commercials, which makes the Amazon muckety-mucks rub their hands together with evil delight.

NBA fans are in their first season of “enjoying” the Prime Video experience as part of the league’s 11-year, $76 billion TV rights deal that spread out games to a number of networks, cable channels and streaming services.

All for the fans, right?

No. Of course not. All for the almighty dollar.

Amazon is not new at the live sports business. They have content such as “Thursday Night Football,” the WNBA, NASCAR, and the Yankees.

But the service still has some bugs to work out. And that’s the scary part about streamers — can they handle the larger audiences in the postseason without maddening glitches?

You pay your money and you cross your fingers. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. It’s like buying a new car and being given a guarantee that it will start most of the time.

As the exclusive home of the NBA’s recent play-in games, Prime Video lost its stream of Wednesday’s Miami-Charlotte game.

For nearly two minutes.

In overtime.

LeBron James, on X, posted: “Tell me the game didn’t just cut off?!!? Am I trippin?? WTH (man facepalming emoji).”

Imagine King James’ reaction — or that of Knicks fans, who are not necessarily known for their level-headedness — if that happened during the Knicks’ first playoff game, or the third one on Thursday, which also is a Prime Video exclusive.

Amazon issued a statement that made absolutely no one feel better.

“Tonight’s broadcast of the Miami Heat at Charlotte Hornets experienced a temporary disruption due to a hardware failure in our production truck,” it read. “Our teams restored the feed as quickly as possible to ensure fans could watch the conclusion of the game. We are conducting a thorough internal review to determine the cause of the outage.”

Look, it’s hard to find anything in life that is free. This newspaper that you are holding in your hands or reading on your device is not free. (Thank you.)

Unless you have a working antenna for your TV, even watching a network game (Games 2 and 4 of Knicks-Hawks will be on NBC and streaming on Peacock) is not free because you have to pay for cable or a streaming service to get that over-the-air channel.

The airwaves were supposed to always be free, with the alphabet soup of ABC, NBC and CBS there to serve in the public interest.

Now the only thing that’s free is your choice to skip a sporting event on TV like Knicks-Hawks Game 1 if you don’t want to pony up for yet another streaming service.

Some fans no doubt do just that — skip regular-season games.

But this is the postseason. Even the first two nights of NBA play-in games on Amazon Prime Video showed a 12% increase over comparable coverage on ESPN and TNT from last season.

You’re a sports fan. They’ve got you, and they know it.

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers sports media and business and professional sports (you know, games and trades and things). He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since Jan. 1, 2026.