Who needs tickets?

The Boston Globe is reporting that people went as far as sleeping in garbage cans as they waited in line to buy tickets for the NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics.

The tickets have become priceless and are selling online for thousands of dollars and the average price for tickets for this year’s series was selling at $262 more than last year’s San Antonio Spurs-Cleveland Cavaliers championship.

 The tickets went on sale on Monday morning and thousands of fans were lining up outside the TD Banknorth Garden to get the coveted tickets.

Shawn Sullivan, the Celtics vice president of ticket sales, told the Boston Globe that while the Garden has capacity for 18,624 people, the vast majority of tickets went to season ticket holders, sponsors, the National Basketball Association, TV networks, and the visiting team.

According to the Boston Herald the box office opened at about 2 p.m. and the nearly 1,000 available seats, which were also being sold at the same time online and by phone, were gone by 3:20 p.m.

Also the system that the Celtics employ to sell their tickets left many fans dejected. The Garden uses a lottery system to determine who among the crowd of people waiting to get tickets will be able to buy them. As people line up they are handed a ticket with a number indicating their place in line.

Security guards closed off the line on Monday at 1 p.m. . Then a Garden employee drew the “271” ticket from a box, so the ticket sale started there. Everyone ahead of that point, even though they had arrived earlier, went home empty handed.

John Wentzell, president of TD Banknorth Garden, told the Boston Herald that the venue has used the lottery for all major events, including sports playoff games, for the past decade.  The system was designed, among other reasons, to put scalpers at a disadvantage and keep them from dominating the line and buying up blocks of tickets - at the expense of everyday fans.