Here’s some fresh footage of Charles Oakley getting booted from Madison Square Garden in the first quarter of last night’s Knicks-Clippers game, courtesy of a Deadspin reader. (An Easter egg: John McEnroe in the background, always the right guy to help cool down a testy situation.)
No fewer than four men had their hands on the Knicks legend, but even at 53, Oak’s still hard to fell.
To hear Oakley tell it, he was just sitting at the game for four and a half minutes when MSG guards approached and said “someone ordered you to leave.” Other reports suggested that Oakley went after Knicks owner James Dolan—whom he famously hates, and is surely the implied “someone”—or fought with a fan.
As for the Knicks side of the story? This pettiness:
If the general goal of PR is de-escalation and smoothing over any ruffled feathers, this is definitely a novel approach.