Victor Wembanyama was leaving his hotel suite. Ron Pavalonis said good luck. Ten minutes after that, Phil Godlewski's whole group had to be out. Twenty grand worth of hotel room, done before dinner.
Phil Godlewski checked into two different hotels that night. First one, a twenty-thousand-dollar Ritz-Carlton penthouse, hadn't made it past five o'clock. His eleven-year-old son's goodwill toward Victor Wembanyama didn't make it much longer.
Godlewski is 43. A Knicks fan. He'd spent close to $750,000 on Finals tickets for the series. That got him two penthouses on the Ritz-Carlton's 41st floor in NoMad, West 28th. He brought six people, two of them his own kids.
Nobody told the group who was staying next door. No mention of it at check-in, no note left in the room, nothing. Ages nine and eleven, Godlewski's sons had no clue their neighbor was the most talked-about player in the league. Wembanyama had the other penthouse on that same floor.
Game 3 Changed Everything
Context helps here. Game 3 had ended with Wembanyama shoving Jalen Brunson on the Garden floor, something Larry Brown Sports and others had already covered. A Spurs fan got assaulted after that same game. Security was already at a different level heading into Game 4.
Godlewski says he gets it, to a point. Given what happened in Game 3, he understood why security around the Spurs was heightened. What he doesn't get is why the hotel put rival fan groups on the same floor to begin with, then expected nothing to happen.
"Not only did they not block out the hotel, but they put us on the same frigging floor as Victor Wembanyama," he said. "What sense does that make? If you don't want anyone around the Spurs, don't book the penthouse directly next to him." That's the question Godlewski kept asking. He says the answer still doesn't add up.
Two NBA Finals Neighbors
Around five that evening, Pavalonis stepped out of the suite into the hallway. Victor Wembanyama, right next door, was heading out. The Spurs center is seven feet three. He was hard to miss.
They had the other penthouse on the same floor. Nobody downstairs had thought to flag that someone in Godlewski's group might say something to a seven-foot-three NBA star in the hallway.
What Pavalonis Said
He said two words, basically. Good luck. "I just simply say, good luck tonight, big guy," Pavalonis recalled. Told reporters he explained himself: "Because at the end of the day, for me, I am a superfan of sports."
"If they had said, listen, you're staying on the same floor as one of the players, you cannot engage with the player," Godlewski explained. "We would have been like, OK, no problem." That option was never put to them. No one at check-in, not at any point after, told Godlewski's group that Wembanyama was their neighbor.
The Manager At The Door
Ten minutes after Pavalonis went back inside, a hotel manager knocked. Group of six needed to leave. Right away, no discussion.
Godlewski asked why. Manager said they'd been "harassing and waiting for the players to exit their rooms." He pushed back. He told her to pull the hallway footage to prove it. She said there weren't any cameras on that floor.
There was a camera. Right above her head, one mounted on the wall. Godlewski was looking right at it. She lied, he says.
The suite ran twenty thousand dollars. He pressed for a refund. Nothing came of it.
A New Hotel, A Burned Jersey
Godlewski didn't go home. He booked into the Trump International on Central Park West instead. Cost was 3,000 bucks that night, compared to the twenty grand he'd just lost. Then he went to the game.
He showed up at Madison Square Garden like he'd planned. He watched the whole thing.
His Game 4 tickets were around a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars each, he says. Neither the hotel nor Wembanyama's team has commented. Multiple outlets tried both sides. Godlewski says he isn't expecting anything at this point.
Before the eviction, Godlewski's eleven-year-old was a Wembanyama fan. Signed jersey, three thousand five hundred dollars, framed on the wall at home. That changed.
On the drive to the Garden, the kid asked if he could burn it. Godlewski said yes. They burned it.
Phil Godlewski called the hotel's claims against his group 'slanderous.' The Ritz-Carlton and Wembanyama's camp haven't responded to that. What Godlewski does keep talking about is his son, the jersey, and the wall where it used to hang.
