Explanation won’t reduce the anger at another Knick gaffe

OUTSIDE, on Seventh Avenue, the anger was already roiling on the sidewalk, under the famous Madison Square Garden marquee. You half expected to see it advertised in bright neon colors: WED., FEB. 22, 8:00: BILLY JOEL LIVE! SAT., FEB. 10, 7:00: AVALANCHE VS. RANGERS!

FRI., FEB. 9, 7:40: FREE THE OAK MAN!

“The only reason I’m here,” said a 26-year old Knicks fan named Sean Coughlin, bedecked in a Knicks windbreaker over his ratty old No. 34 jersey, “is to yell Charles Oakley’s name as loud as I can, and hope someone will hear me.”

Twenty-six floors above where Coughlin was crushing a hot dog, mustard and relish, washing it down with a root beer, the message already had gotten through. James Dolan sat at a long conference table near his office at Two Penn Plaza, surveying the virtual wreckage of his basketball team, speaking in a detached voice, a few hours after officially declaring the Garden off-limits to one of its most famous former citizens.

It was a nuclear move Dolan believed he had to make, even if it was hard to find anyone else in Manhattan — even those who acknowledge Oakley went too far the other night — who saw it the same way.

“I understand,” Dolan said. “He was a great player for us.”

Dolan sat in his usual seat Friday night, behind the baseline, Eighth Avenue side, catty-corner to the Knicks’ bench. He knew what was coming, and with 5 minutes and 31 seconds to go in the first quarter, they came tumbling out of the old blue seats: “WE WANT OAKLEY! WE WANT OAKLEY! “WE WANT OAKLEY!”

“There’ll be angry chants,” Dolan said. “What am I going to do?”

Dolan has tried to make himself scarce for almost three full years, insisting he has enjoyed life in Phil Jackson’s shadow.

“It had gotten easier to do that, to have my hands off, right up until a few days ago,” Dolan said. “Now I’m hoping for it to get easier again.”

That won’t be so easy. He can produce a thousand reasons why bringing a gun to this knife fight with Oakley is good for business and proper for the environment he wishes to produce at the Garden, and it’s never going to pass muster with most Knicks fans. Maybe that’s fair. Maybe it isn’t. Many were still just trying to process a couple of unprocessable words: “lifetime ban.”

“It doesn’t have to be forever,” Dolan said.

After his three-year hiatus, Dolan showed these past few days he still has an easy habit of taking his hands-on behavior to the extreme. It was uncomfortable the other night when, in the Knicks’ original statement, he talked about Oakleyy needing to seek “help.” He doubled down on that Friday afternoon, declaring on Michael Kay’s radio program he thinks Oakley has a drinking problem.

Then he split his aces in the conference room, 26 floors above Seventh Avenue. “I’m sure he has problems,” said Dolan, who himself has overcome substance-abuse issues yet still had little problem conducting, in essence, a public intervention for Oakley, with the whole of New York invited to participate. “When you’re fighting addiction it’s not that much different from anger management or other diseases where you can’t control yourself. The first step is to turn that around for yourself, is admitting you have a problem. And then, from there, you can begin to take the steps to take control back in your life.

“Charles is at that point now where he is in denial with his issues about his problem. He has a problem. I want to make it absolutely clear: in my opinion, in everything I see, everything I read, this man has a problem.” Dolan paused. “I’m very familiar with this: when you’re an alcoholic … I’ve never met an alcoholic who, while he was actively using, who said, ‘I drank too much.’ They never say that. It isn’t until the consequences of their own behavior catch up and there’s someone beside them that they can begin to see that they have to take control of this.”

Dolan believed this was an olive branch of sorts, a hand of help. It isn’t likely Oakley will see it that way, nor will any of the others who want to know when their basketball team turned into “Satirical on 34th Street.” Those folks watched the Knicks play their usual phantom defense in the first quarter against Denver, and showered them with boos at the game’s first time out en route to a 131-123 loss.

Just another night, ringside at the circus.