One week after former Knicks guard Chris Childs criticized his old teammates on CBS Sports Radio, Charles Oakley did the same thing Monday morning on The DA Show.
Oakley, who played for the Knicks from 1988 to 1998, expressed a desire to “smack” Bernard King, said that Patrick Ewing was high-maintenance, and called NBA owners "embarrassing" for trying to finish the 2019-20 season and for putting on Sunday’s HORSE Tournament, which he dismissed as a three-point competition.
Oakley, 56, also opened up about his infamous run-in with James Dolan. Oakley, a vocal critic of Dolan, was handcuffed and arrested at Madison Square Garden in February 2017. Two days later, Dolan banned Oakley from Madison Square Garden and suggested that he had a drinking problem.
That, however, didn’t stop Latrell Sprewell, Larry Johnson, Bernard King and other former Knicks from sitting with Dolan at a Knicks game just four days after Oakley’s arrest.
“I just don’t want to be around these guys,” Oakley said on The DA Show. “A lot of guys I played with, I just lost respect for them because I went to war for them. I protected them, from Patrick on down. Patrick just spoke up two weeks ago about this. But I could have gotten sentenced in jail for 20 years. Three years later, it’s over with really. It’s a PR stunt.”
Oakley and King were never teammates, but both played for the Knicks. King’s final year in New York was in 1987. The Knicks acquired Oakley from Chicago in 1988.
“I was disappointed in Bernard King, too,” Oakley said. “I addressed it to him . . . two years ago. He said, ‘Well, my wife wanted to go to a game.’ I said, ‘Bernard, this man [Dolan] makes you turn off your Twitter account, and you’re going to tell me out of 41 home games, this is the game your wife wanted to go to?’ I wanted to smack Bernard. Serious. . . . I lost so much respect for him. I can’t even speak to him.”
Oakley also ripped Ewing, calling his teammate of 10 years high-maintenance.
“Even though I said he’s high-maintenance, people might take that wrong – he was a high-maintenance player,” Oakley said. “Everybody in the world knows he was. You got to be special to play with Patrick. You had to do so much out of your ordinary just to be on the team, and that hurt us sometimes. As a team, we’re supposed to be close and together. It wasn’t that. We had to make sure he was happy. He didn’t care if we was happy or not. That’s a sad situation, and I see why the Knicks won’t give him a job. He treated them bad – inside out. Chris will tell you. He was tough to play with, but he wasn’t no problem to me because I understand. Mase [Anthony Mason] had a problem with it because Mase always hollered and cussed at him.”
In other news, Oakley was not a fan of the NBA’s HORSE Tournament. He also does not think the league should try to finish the 2019-20 season.
“[Having] a three-point shootout at a time like this, it’s embarrassing,” Oakley said. “There’s no way they should have it. Let the guys go home, enjoy the summer and come back for next year. Forget about what happened this year. Let them go. Let them enjoy the moment. . . . It’s embarrassing. . . . They’re not going to be in shape. They’re going to get injured trying to finish out 20 games of the season.”