Michelle Musler, whose four-decade devotion to the New York Knicks in a seat behind the team’s bench made her one of the most recognizable mainstays at Madison Square Garden, died on June 28 in Stamford, Conn. She was 81.

The cause was cancer, her family said.

Ms. Musler, then an executive for the Xerox Corporation, became a season-ticket holder at the Garden after the Knicks’ second and last championship season, 1972-73. Eventually she was sitting within arm’s reach of the players and coaches, and on occasion taking advantage of the proximity.

“Whenever I would walk out on the floor, disheveled with my collar up or my tie crooked, she would come up from behind, fix it and just step back to her seat with a smile but without saying a word,” Jeff Van Gundy, the former Knicks coach and now a television sportscaster, said in an interview.

Of the many Knicks coaches she sat behind, Mr. Van Gundy was Ms. Musler’s favorite, in large part because he was, at 5-foot-9, the shortest. By the time he appeared for pregame introductions, Mr. Van Gundy said, Ms. Musler was “always in her seat, never late.”