Kid had the jersey framed. Signed, $3,500, hung on his bedroom wall back in Pennsylvania, because his hero was Victor Wembanyama. Not anymore. His dad says Wemby is exactly why that jersey is ash now.
Phil Godlewski is 43, runs a media operation out of Pennsylvania, livestreams and podcasts and whatever else comes with that. He spent almost $750K on Game 4 tickets, told the New York Post as much, and reserved a $20K suite at the Ritz-Carlton NoMad for his entire group, so yes, the plan was promising.
Nobody Said Anything About Wemby Being Next Door
Two penthouse suites sat on the 41st floor of that hotel. Godlewski took one. He didn’t find out who was in the other until it was already a problem.
His boys were with him, 11 and 9 years old, and his buddy Ron Pavalonis plus Pavalonis’s kid too. Six of them total, one room, twenty grand a night, views stretching across the city.
Five Words In A Hallway
Five in the afternoon, give or take. Pavalonis stepped out the suite door and Wembanyama was coming out of his right at the same moment, presumably heading down to the Garden for warmups. Pavalonis did what any fan does.
“I just simply say, ‘Good luck tonight, big guy.’ Because at the end of the day, I am a superfan of sports,” he said.
Ten minutes went by. Then a knock at the door.
Manager At The Door, Camera On The Ceiling
Hotel manager said the group needed to pack up and go, right then. Reason she gave: staff had reports of Godlewski’s party harassing players, hanging around in the hallway waiting on them.
He asked to see security footage, prove it didn’t happen like that. She told him there weren’t cameras on that floor. Problem is, Godlewski says, there was one mounted directly above her head while she was telling him that. He filmed the whole exchange on his phone and called a lawyer before the night was over.
There Is Context Here
A Spurs fan got jumped outside the arena after Game 3. And Wembanyama wasn’t exactly popular at Madison Square Garden to begin with, not after pushing Jalen Brunson to the floor in Game 3 with no foul called. The league acknowledged afterward that the officials blew it. Still wasn’t upgraded to a flagrant.
Godlewski gets the hotel being on edge, fine. Can’t figure out why they didn’t just clear the whole floor for Wemby or take over the building if security was the problem, like what else are you doing. “It was a huge mistake on their part,” he said.
Six tickets to the Finals, $125,000 apiece by his count, that’s where the 750k figure comes from, and the suite he got tossed from was running twenty grand the night they kicked him out of it.
No Comment, One Lawyer, One Burned Jersey
He moved everybody over to the Trump International on Central Park West. Three thousand bucks for the night, practically pocket change by comparison. Wasn’t really the point, though.
Point was the kid. The 11-year-old who had that signed Wemby jersey hanging on the wall. Godlewski says his son was devastated hearing what happened, couldn’t get his head around one of his favorite players doing that to people. By the time they got back to Pennsylvania, the jersey was off the wall and already burned. Three thousand five hundred dollars, gone.
Reporters asked about the stuff directly, he didn’t dodge it. “Yes, that’s me” he said. Harassment claim is slander, his words, and the lawyer call already happened. Ritz-Carlton’s got nothing to say so far, Wembanyama’s camp the same. Knicks are up 3-1 in the series now, probably one win from burying all of this in a footnote. Or the lawyer keeps it going. Either way.
