Naquan Butts, 19, and Michael Bethune, 18, were watching the game with a couple of friends in Butts’ Crown Heights apartment Sunday night, when Butts and Bethune began arguing.

It started with each choosing a different team and claiming it was going to win, Butts told police.

Then, he said, the trash talk turned physical and they found themselves tussling right out the apartment door and into the 10th-floor hallway at about 11:45 p.m.

Butts drew a knife and stabbed his pal once in the chest, police said.

The mortally wounded Bethune stumbled into the elevator, but went nowhere before collapsing inside.

The unprecedented jump in collars at nine key spans in the Big Apple, including the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, has prompted MTA Bridge and Tunnels to build two “arrest-processing centers” — equipped with high-tech computers capable of scanning fingerprints and running criminal background checks.

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Greg Lombardi, vice president of the Bridge and Tunnel Benevolent Association, said it will also help them “effectively track arrests, crime patterns and criminals.” Statistics show that in 2000, 202 arrests — including 165 for drunken driving — were made at the nine crossings with another 278 arrests made in 2001.

Since then, arrest figures have jumped dramatically, starting in 2002 when 434 motorists were arrested and rising to a high in 2005 of 1,803 collars — 784 of them for driving while intoxicated.

“Since 9/11, mobile and foot patrols on the plazas and facilities have increased and we execute a greater number of random checkpoints and stops,” Lombardi said.

The bumbling thugs entered The Pickle Guys shop on Essex Street at around 8:30 a.m. as owner Alan Kaufman was preparing to open for business. One pointed a gun at the veteran cucumber curer, but the less-than-dynamic duo got more than they bargained for when he fought back — kicking the gunman right in the “pickles.”

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Kaufman said he was sweeping the floor when the two men, wearing ski masks and latex gloves, lifted the metal grate and walked in.

“What are you doin’?” Kaufman asked — but the crooks shut him up with an angry “never mind!”

Hip to the fact he was about to be robbed, the Pickle Guy started jabbing at the would-be bandits with his broom.

One of the robbers pulled a gun — but rather than recoil, the brave Pickle Guy dove at him.

“I grabbed his hand, trying to get [the gun] away from him,” Kaufman said, adding that the scuffle caused the two attackers to fall.

There was a minimal reaction to the images by audience members; some seemed surprised and raised eyebrows, but others just watched. With camerapersons from various publications at the foot of the catwalk, many onlookers seemed more overwhelmed by the blatant sexuality displayed by the models and Braun, who sang about sex while the runway models bared their breasts and swayed their hips without restraint.

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“You don’t know what just happened. Yo, I just stabbed some kid,” Novoa, 19, of South Beach, is said to have blurted out after entering the unidentified restaurant according to the source, who would only speak with the Advance on the condition of anonymity.

Orloski was stabbed five times — once in the head and four times in the chest — during a Feb. 4 melee at a Dongan Hills playground next to PS 52.