The Knicks have won one playoff series and had 11 different coaches in the past 17 years. TNT’s Reggie Miller delivered his cruelest Garden dagger in 20 years Thursday, tweeting, “If you’re a FA to be, why would you play for an Owner who treats the past greats like this or a President who stabs star player in the back?” When you opened them, though, it was 2017 and Phil Jackson had used 140 characters to further alienate Anthony as if he were a newbie commander in chief baiting Australia. Late May, and the Garden full and vibrant, instead of eerily silent. If you closed your eyes, it could have been the ’90s, Oak bobbing his shoulders back and forth in the layup line as “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems” blared through the arena speakers. “ OAK-LEE! OAK-LEE!” the throaty Garden roar came, cascading down, from the pinwheel ceiling to the floor. So, instead of anyone talking about a riveting run between the Los Angeles Clippers and the current Knicks - or even how the organization has failed to put the right combination of players around Carmelo Anthony - they left talking about the Legend of Oak. It began when Dolan, the Emperor Commodus of this tale, allegedly decided he did not want a former player who had been openly critical of him and the organization sitting close to him. The conflict on Wednesday produced as regretful an image as there has ever been at the Garden. You could outplay him, but you could never outwork him. But hell if he would let either All-Star beat him down the floor to their spot on the blocks. He could never outjump Chris Webber or outscore Karl Malone. It never happened, but they tried their damndest - no one more than Oakley, a dumptruck of a man in high-tops. (Starks, Johnson and Houston are all on the Knicks’ payroll now in various roles.) Eventually, Ewing and a bunch of half-decent role players began to buy in to the good of the group so strongly that they believed they could knock off Michael Jordan and the Inevita-Bulls. And resolution produced 50-win seasons and long playoff runs. The Knicks of Oak, Ewing, Anthony Mason, John Starks and later Larry Johnson and Allan Houston had their dysfunction, ego and agendas. Patrick Ewing, a Hall of Famer who has paid his dues to become one of the NBA’s top assistant coaches, can’t even get an interview.Īnd now, team owner James Dolan has likely cut himself off from ever benefiting from the wisdom of the man who helped hold combustible Knicks teams together so long ago. They have shown no interest in having arguably the greatest player in franchise history as their head coach. Years ago, they wouldn’t extend the contract of Marv Albert, forcing the world’s greatest basketball announcer to move out of what was once the world’s greatest arena - allegedly because Albert was too critical of the team. The Knicks had yet again disregarded another important heirloom of Madison Square Garden’s past. The organization that knew no bottom finally found one. It was then that you knew the Knicks had hit their nadir. It took six security guards to bring his 6-foot-9, 260-pound frame to the ground and escort him through the tunnel, where he was handcuffed and eventually booked at a Manhattan precinct. Canada is now one of the world’s top sources of elite prep basketball recruits.The Undefeated 44: African Americans who shook up the world.The King is crowned: The true and actual arrival of LeBron James.How black Utah Jazz players have embraced Salt Lake City.The arena held no glory for him now, only painful memories of a past his former employer refuses to honor, and a team owner who put security guards in a no-win situation by allowing them to surround Oakley - in essence, cornering a man who was once paid to move aside larger mounds of muscle than himself - who knows one way to extricate himself from such circumstances: But Charles Oakley barely recognized the place anymore. Maximus, the power forward, returned to the Colosseum on 34th Street in midtown Manhattan, New York, on Wednesday night. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish … It was so fragile” – Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator
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