One of Patrick Ewing’s former teammates has his back after the latest Garden incident.
Charles Oakley, who played with Ewing during his entire Knicks tenure from 1988-98 – and also had an infamous dust-up with MSG security and owner James Dolan – said on his Step in the Arena podcast that the incident “didn’t surprise him” and that MSG and the Knicks “don’t respect Ewing.”
"It’s a plantation over there. If you ain’t doing the work for them, they don’t respect you. That’s all I can say. Spike [Lee], Patrick, myself, other people, fans. It’s just a disrespectful situation though with him. He has a lot of notoriety, but it’s just, [they] don’t respect him,” Oakley said.
Oak then intimated that there may be some racial undertones, comparing the situation to that of former Clippers owner Donald Sterling and saying that the NBA needs to step in and perhaps force Dolan to sell the Knicks “before it gets out of hand, like it was in L.A.”
Ewing will return to the Garden on Friday for the semifinals of the Big East Tournament, back on the sidelines a day after he wondered aloud why no one recognized him at MSG when asked to show his credentials in the arena.
After the dustup, MSG release a statement saying Dolan and Ewing “have a long-standing relationship; they spoke this afternoon and reaffirmed that. We all know, respect and appreciate what he means to The Garden and New York. Good luck to him and his Hoyas in the Big East semi-finals.”
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