Popper: Oakley's MSG arrest leaves everyone defeated

The voice echoed through the catacombs of Madison Square Garden. Loud screams and cursing, plaintive cries of desperation. This was the sound of Charles Oakley, a beloved New York Knicks player from the last time the team was worth cheering, begging for the handcuffs to be removed, for the security and police to let him go.

This was the strange place that Oakley found himself in, yanked from his seat in the first quarter Wednesday night. This was the surreal place, tucked into a tunnel out of visual range, but well within screaming range, that I found myself in, along with a contingent of reporters who rushed down the stairs to try to find out what was happening.

And this was the all-too-common place the Knicks find themselves in, the laughingstock of the NBA.

"The Knicks don't have a rock bottom," an executive from another team texted — before Oakley and the Knicks engaged in an ugly confrontation, when the more typical odd behavior of the franchise was thought to be the low point. "Can't wait for the next episode to see what happens!!! Better than any sitcom."

This one wasn't funny, though. This was a sad, sometimes scary, episode, but a defining chapter in the ownership of James Dolan.

The video has run over and over, it's almost impossible to have not seen by now. Oakley surrounded by Madison Square Garden security. He stands up, his 6-foot-8, still-chiseled frame towering over even the beefy security crew. The talk grows more heated, Oakley pushes a finger into the face of one and then, when another longtime security guard puts his hands on Oakley in a calming gesture, Oakley smacks his hands off him and shoves him away twice. That triggers the team of guards to pull him from his seat and toward the tunnel to the bowels of the Garden. He falls and gets up, handcuffed and then arrested.

Before the police van even pulls out of the Garden, the team has issued a disturbing statement, intimating, well, something — either a mental issue or a substance problem, as it concluded, "He was a great Knick and we hope he gets some help soon."

He was a great Knick and that makes it so hard to understand how — why — it would go this far. However it started Wednesday night it was just sad. Whether you believe the Knicks' version, that Oakley was behaving in an inappropriate and abusive manner, or Oakley’s — which is backed up by fans in the area — that he didn’t do anything wrong and that security was called by Dolan, seated just a few rows in front of him with orders to clear him out, it never had to get to this point.

The two sides have been divided almost since the time he was traded away in 1998. Even when he was with the Knicks he was an honest voice in the locker room, willing to put his name to criticism of anyone he felt was underachieving. He stood up for his teammates but was willing to call them out, too.

"He’s the best teammate in the world," Los Angeles Clippers coach and Oakley's former Knicks teammate Doc Rivers said. "He really is."

"I've been saying the same thing since '88 when I came to New York," Oakley said on The Stephen A. Smith Show on ESPN Radio. "I ain't critical man, you are more critical. He gets mad at the headlines, I don't write the headlines. What am I supposed to say, they are going to win 60 (games)?"

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Oakley was certainly in the wrong to shove the security guards, but how one of the standouts of the franchise is so far on the outside of its good graces is hard to imagine. Oakley said in a series of interviews — one right after being released from the Midtown South Precinct, charged with three counts of assault and one of criminal trespass — that security told him they were under orders to throw him out.

But Oakley has openly campaigned to build a bridge back to the organization. If the Knicks had welcomed that advance, accepted him back, would we ever have been here, listening to the screams of desperation?

You would think that maybe the Knicks might realize where they have placed themselves when the fans screamed, too, chanting, "Oak-ley, Oak-ley, Oak-ley," as he was being arrested. No one was chanting Dolan's name, but public sentiment means little to the stubborn owner and his minions.

Rather than back down the Knicks doubled down, issuing another statement Thursday afternoon that read, "There are dozens of security staff, employees and NYPD that witnessed Oakley's abusive behavior. It started when he entered the building and continued until he was arrested and left the building. Every single statement we have received is consistent in describing his actions. Everything he said since the incident is pure fiction."

So the Madison Square Garden employees stood by the owner. Ask around MSG in a quiet corner what the consequences are for defying Dolan and let me know when you find one willing to risk their job.

Or you could just listen to Oakley. Not his reasoned explanations, not his efforts even after all of this to make peace and assert his love for the Knicks and their fans. Listen to the screaming echoing off the concrete walls away from the glamour of the Garden stands and you’ll know what happens when you defy Dolan.

The only difference between this and most every other night at the Garden was that it wasn’t just the Knicks that lost. On this night, everyone lost.

Email Bergen County (N.J.) Record reporter Steve Popper at popper@northjersey.com.