If there’s anyone who knows what Spike Lee is going through right now, it’s Charles Oakley.
Oakley was removed from Madison Square Garden in handcuffs by security in 2017 after getting into an argument with team owner James Dolan. He was given a lifetime ban from the arena after the altercation and hasn’t been back since.
Fast forward three years later and Spike Lee is getting into arguments with ownership himself and saying he won’t watch games from MSG for the rest of the season. He’s not on the same lifetime ban tip as Oakley is, but it doesn’t feel like he’s too far away.
And, apparently, Oakley has had enough. He’s so fed up with the team that he wants the NBA to step in, he told the Associated Press.
“It’s got to be stopped in some kind of way. The NBA has got to take a look at this. You can’t keep closing your eyes to this. This is like, turn your head if you see someone beat somebody up and you just keep walking. It just keeps happening in New York. People are not going to come here because it’s the same thing over and over and over. They got a new president and all everyone is talking about what happened between Spike Lee and the Garden.”
I mean, he’s not wrong. Nobody even remembered that the Knicks won their game against the Rockets on the day they officially hired Leon Rose. It wasn’t even an afterthought — all people talked about was Spike Lee and the Knicks beef.
It’s hard to see the NBA stepping in and doing anything, really. We’ve only seen that on a few occasions, such as the Donald Sterling incident, and, uh, that ain’t this.
But the Knicks are definitely a mess and will continue to be one until someone cleans them up.
