Now we know why there are still people heading to The Garden. There aren't any Knicks’ fans left, they are all paid actors. At least that’s the conclusion one could draw from a story in the New York Press. It turns out that the people in the "fan ads" (like the one pictured above), are mostly paid actors and their stories are made up for the commercials. The surprising thing is that apparently the Knicks didn’t know this.
The creative director at Wolfe/Davis, Daniel Wolfe says that, “I had no idea, because they were supposed to sign affidavits that they weren’t actors. We even asked them what they did for a living.” He also adds that he would have turned down Robert De Niro or Spike Lee if they had auditioned because “fans are fans and they come from the heart.”
The mix up apparently came when Wolfe/Davis outsourced the casting to the ironically named, Impossible Casting. Ads went out over the Internet looking for “All Knicks fans 15-80 years old”. One candidate who wasn’t selected said he was told the job would pay between $1000 and $1500 and came with a ticket to home opener. Considering the state of the team these days that seems like a bargain, but what are the Knicks willing to pay the rest of us to keep watching?
