James Dolan blasts Mamdani on security around MSG: 'This is on the Mayor's office'

“You have an easier chance of getting into Area 51 today than you do Madison Square Garden.”

If you were anywhere near, or tried to be near, Madison Square Garden on Monday night, you know how tight security and restrictions were – a phenomenon many pinned mostly on President Trump being in attendance for Game 3 of Knicks-Spurs.

Not so much, though, as it will be the same tonight (albeit with people allowed to gather for a watch party in front of the arena this time) – and in an appearance he specifically asked for on Wednesday’s edition of The Carton Show with Chris McMonigle, James Dolan, who uttered the quote at the top of this article, pinned it on a different and much more local sitting politician.

“We love the NYPD, they can handle this – they don’t need this, and if you asked them and they were able to answer unfettered, they’d tell you that,” Dolan said. “It’s really the Mayor’s office, and I cannot explain their decisions on this, but it makes no sense at all. The reason I wanted to (be on the show) is there’s a lot of people who are headed down to the Garden and the Midtown area, and as much time as you’ve allotted, you’ve not allotted enough time with the restrictions on this area. Even if you come by train or subway, they’re not letting you up – they’re going to push you outside of the forbidden zone and show that you have a reason to be there.”

Dolan thinks all of it is unfair, and, again, pins it on an inexplicable decision from the Mayor’s office that may stem from incidents at events NOT sanctioned by the Knicks.

“This is all really designed around stopping people from celebrating around Madison Square Garden. Bryant Park – that wasn’t our party, that was the Mayor’s party!” Dolan said of Monday’s events elsewhere. “Why people acted up there, I don’t know, but that’s not Madison Square Garden. We’ve had tens of thousands of people celebrating outside, and it’s been relatively peaceful.”

The Mayor’s Office claimed that the permit application that MSG requested for the Game 4 Watch Party was for 500-1,000 people, which Dolan downplayed, and once again laid the onus for everything on some sort of inadequacy being felt from above.

“This is not really about a watch party – I don’t think you can get much more than 1,000 people who will see the screens we had put up. This is about celebrating the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, the mecca of basketball, and this is what they’re trying to kill: they don’t want the celebration,” Dolan said. “I can’t tell you why, and I’m not sure they know why, but they clearly don’t want it.”

And again, it has nothing to do with a certain leader in attendance.

"The Secret Service didn't demand this stuff - it was the NYPD, and more importantly, the Commissioner's office. This was her plan all along, they just used the President to set it up," Dolan said. "These are New Yorkers, Knicks fans - no matter what the Commissioner does, they're gonna celebrate the Knicks, and they wanna do it around the Garden. It’s common sense, and I don’t really know what’s there.”

And it’s not just hurting fans themselves - it's hurting those businesses around MSG that see a surge in business around events at the World's Most Famous Arena.

“We had a call the owner of Bravo Pizza on 30^th who had an average night; he knows he’s going to do three times the business around Knicks games, and he just didn’t, because of these Draconian decisions,” Craig told Dolan.

“And these restaurants all hired extra staff, and they’re getting crushed, and it’s not fair,” Dolan replied. “All I would say to the Mayor and the Commissioner is believe in New Yorkers and that we can handle this. We are the greatest city in the world with the greatest fans and citizens in the world, and they are not going to turn this into Armageddon. I can't fix this city, that's the Mayor's job, but we love Knicks fans, and they should have the opportunity to celebrate this. We've been waiting a long, long time for this moment - don't take it away."