TICKETS for Sunday’s (Beijing Time this morning) decisive seventh-game NBA Finals championship showdown between the Cleveland Cavaliers and defending champion Golden State are going for a king’s ransom on the resale market.

    StubHub spokesman Cameron Papp says the ticket resale firm sold the most expensive non-suite seats in its 16-year history to the Father’s Day matchup at Oakland’s Oracle Arena, with each ticket going for US$49,500.

    Papp told USA Today and ESPN that the unidentified purchaser of the courtside seats broke the website’s old record of US$37,000 for a front-row seat to game four of the 2008 NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics.

    The buyer was “well known,” Papp told ESPN.

    StubHub also sold a ticket for US$35,000 to last year’s boxing showdown between Filipino icon Manny Pacquiao and unbeaten U.S. fighter Floyd Mayweather in Las Vegas.

    “Nothing really surprises me with the Warriors,” Papp told USA Today. “It’s a game seven and it’s in Silicon Valley, where people have deep pockets.”

    LeBron James scored 41 points in each of the past two games to spark Cleveland victories and rally the Cavaliers from a 3-1 deficit in the best-of-seven series to force the seventh-game winner-take-all showdown.

    Either the Cavaliers will complete the greatest comeback in NBA history — no team has ever rallied from 3-1 down to win the finals — and the Warriors will suffer the greatest choke in finals history or the Warriors will cap a campaign that included a record 73 regular-season wins from 82 games with a crown and hand James his fifth loss in seven NBA Finals appearances.

    (SD-Agencies)