Sad scene for franchise icon
THE CURIOUS were craning their necks at Madison Square Garden, hoping for a better view of the commotion three floors below. There, on the fifth floor, maybe five seats behind the Eighth Avenue baseline, a large man was shoving a smaller man. That much was easy to see, even before the cell phones started snapping.
The players on the court were frozen, pointing at the hullabaloo, saying very little; there were 6 minutes and 18 seconds left in the first quarter of what would evolve into a wildly entertaining, up-and-down, defense-optional 119115 Clippers victory over the Knicks. But the athletes were bit players now, the game pure warm-up.
Even three floors away, you could hear the shouting.
And then someone said, “Holy [expletive] is that Oakley?”
And then another voice, and another. Once you heard the name Charles Oakley, even from the eighth floor of the Garden, you could see it was him: dark business suit, salt and pepper hair, only a few ticks north of his playing weight. And fully engaged in his primary playing disposition: somewhere between grouchy and grumpy. With a default of ornery. Except now it wasn’t just hard words coming out of Oakley’s mouth. A security man was trying to calm him, and Oakley shoved the security man’s arm out of the way. Then he pushed the security man. And pushed him again. And now, this wasn’t quite so funny anymore.
Now, a ring of security men gathered around Charles Oakley, who played power forward with ferocity and distinction for 11 glorious years as a Knick, whose play used to stir the adrenaline of an entire basketball city, and they dragged him away, used to command the voices of 19,763 to the pinwheel roof and beyond night after night after night, and they dragged him away.
The crowd, happy to see a reminder of the glory days, even one that was bordering on the sociopathic, wasn’t in what you might call a discriminating mood. They saw Oakley doing what Oakley did, scaring for a fight, looking to maybe plant an elbow in the small of Antonio Davis’ back, or a strategic forearm in Horace Grant’s solar plexus. That’s what they saw — what they wanted to see. “OAK-LEEE!” they chanted. “OAK-LEEE!” they cheered. But this wasn’t a tough, sculpted basketball player doing this anymore. This wasn’t 1993 anymore. At the Garden, there is always that sobering reminder that it isn’t just years that have passed since the Knicks were the city’s daily nourishment of feel-good, but decades now. Twentyfour years since those 60-win Knicks of ’93, 23 years since the ’94 Finalists.
And the years seem to pass by more quickly every year.
“OAK-LEEEEE!” the people roared, but this wasn’t Oakley being ejected from a game by Jess Kersey or Dick Bavetta, having fought the good fight against Reggie Miller or Michael Jordan or Alonzo Mourning. The security man was half Oakley’s size. If someone hadn’t gotten him gone, Oakley could have done some real damage.
Oakley wound up on the ground, cuffed, read his Miranda rights, and then arrested. This is what the Knicks have become. This is the residue that stains today, when memory is no longer capable of parting the clouds and halting the misery. This is the haphazard slapstick slop show the Garden Knicks are now that another basketball season has been sacrificed to the salt pillars of incompetence.
As if on cue, this is where Phil Jackson appeared to comfort Oakley. Blaming Jackson for Oakley’s outburst is silly, but it is a reflection of what Jeff Hornacek spoke about the other day, how every day you just sit around, waiting for something nutty to reveal itself at the Garden. And something always does.
“I didn’t do anything,” is what the witnesses later on would testify that Oakley said as was being dragged away. That and “Dolan did this.”
Oakley has a famously prickly relationship with James Dolan, the Garden boss, and was sitting only five rows back and one section to the right behind the owner.
Oakley has criticized Dolan regularly since he was exiled to Toronto almost 20 years ago, and reportedly started chattering in Dolan’s direction at the start of this fiasco; some called it “heckling,” others asserted it was more sinister, more vulgar.
“Charles Oakley came to the game tonight and behaved in a highly inappropriate and completely abusive manner,” Knicks PR wrote in a statement. “He has been ejected and is currently being arrested by the New York City Police Department. He was a great Knick and we hope he gets some help soon.”
By then, David Checketts’ son had tweeted that Checketts, the old Garden czar, was trying to bail Oakley out of jail. The old wingman, No. 34, he needed the help this night, probably needed to sleep it off. Not his finest hour. For the Knicks? Just another series of bad hours for them.