Breaking the Bank - The Story of the 2015 NBA Finals Ticket Prices

The 2015 NBA Finals really does have it all, and your wallet better have it all too if you'd like to catch a game in person. The stage is set for a classic battle that will pit the selfless budding young superstar against the grizzly veteran who is on the hunt for yet another ring.

According to Forbes.com, the average ticket price to watch the Golden State Warriors at home this season was $327 (as of 2/9) which was up 121% from the previous months average ticket price of $148.  This average ticket price was 27% higher than the Cleveland Cavaliers who had the second highest average ticket price of $258.

These numbers are of course skewed by the outrageous prices for floor seats, but if you are a trust fund baby then you are in luck because that extra $50,000 that your grandpa left you may be just enough to sit court side. Floor seats for game 1 at Oracle are currently starting at $17,000 each on Stubhub.com and go as high as $100,000 per ticket, and thats not even including 5-10% service charge per ticket that can easily tack on another $5,000 for a pair of tickets.

For those of you like myself that are not set to inherit a small fortune, there is still hope. After keeping tabs on basically the cheapest tickets for the past couple of days, the prices are definitely dropping, and I would imagine they will continue to drop right up until opening tip of game 1 this Thursday. Tickets are starting at $620 each for section 200 on Ticketmaster.com, which doesn't include additional service charge fees.

My personal favorite source to buy resale tickets is the Gametime App, which doesn't charge any service fees and delivers the tickets electronically to your phone. The screen shot above shows the cheapest prices for game 1 as of right now, which have dropped about $75 since Saturday.

The table below was compiled by CBSSports.com and shows the average ticket prices per game from the last three NBA Finals via TicketCity. These numbers speak for themselves, with game 1 nearly tripling in price in comparison to the 2014 NBA Finals.

As a broke college student, it is pretty disheartening to see such astronomical numbers for tickets to a basketball game, but due to the Warrior's large market and steady rise into the national spotlight Dubs tickets are a hot commodity these days (plus this isn't just any basketball game). It's hard to imagine only 4-5 years ago I paid $45 to sit in the 5th row to watch the Warriors take on the Spurs in the final game of the regular season in which the Dubs were "tanking" to secure a potential top ten pick that eventually turned into Harrison Barnes.

Pictured above were the seats I was fortunate enough to sit in for game 1 of the opening round against the Pelicans at a modest price of $350 each. Those same seats are currently going for $1650 a pop for game 1 of the finals. HA. Looks like I'll be eating a $7 Papa Murphy's pizza on my couch for game 1. It's pretty scary to think of what a regular season game will cost next year, regardless of the outcome of these Finals. I don't even want to think about what prices will look like for a home game when the Warriors move to San Francisco.

This is the double edged sword that comes into play when a team ascends into greatness much like the Golden State Warriors have done over the past few seasons. While it can be hard to justify spending this amount of money for tickets, I think it would be completely worth it. While it looks like the Warriors are destined to make a run at numerous titles over the next couple years, nothing in life is gaurenteed and who is to say the Warriors won't see the NBA Finals for another 40 years. The Warriors can now be considered a first class organization, and behind Joe Lacob this franchise been committed to building a perennial championship contender. Over the past couple of seasons this organization has been stacking up the accomplishments starting with General Manager Bob Meyers winning NBA Executive of the Year and All-Star guard Stephen Curry being named as the NBA's Most Valuable Player in 2015. The organization as a whole won the Sports Team of the Year in 2014.

As Darren Rovell reports, lets not be too quick to forget about the accusations that StubHub made suggesting that the Warriors and Ticketmaster have been teaming up to create an illegal resale market in which the Warriors were telling season ticket holders that if they did not resale their tickets through Ticketmaster or NBAtickets.com, their season ticket privileges and chances at playoff tickets would be revoked.

With all that being said, who is planning on attending a 2015 NBA Finals game and may I come with?