Okay, glad you posted this. Was tempted to rip into Ralph V's tweet (and I actually follow Ralph as a Giants fan). I had to work today, but snuck out at 4:30 and walked in at 4:55. There were many more people there at that point (maybe a few thousand). Was disappointed at the time, but 2nd half was much better. Honestly, I think it was just the logistics of a 5pm gametime. People aren't going to waste taking a full vacation day at work so it comes down if they can get to Garden anywhere near 5pm. And keep in mind we were not only 5 point favorites last night, but usually always win the first night in general (we have won most of these early tourneys as of late). So my point is that many folks would not have planned in advance to take Friday off, thus, if they thought it was impossible to get to MSG anywhere near 5, they just decided to skip it in person tonight.
Most importantly, and as Shermthegeneral commented on earlier, it is asinine that the first game was a scheduled 5pm tip time (he suggested 6pm). I think even 5:30pm would be enough to have an impact (although I realize everything gets backed up from when the ESPN family of networks wants to show the Championship game).
