You won’t see Charles Oakley around Madison Square Garden anytime next season.
The former New York Knicks great got into a scuffle with arena security in February, which led to an arrest and subsequent ban from the team’s home court by owner James Dolan, who eventually left the door open for a return, but the Knicks still pursued charges against Oakley in court.
And on Friday, Oakley accepted a one-year ban from MSG in exchange for those charges to be dropped after six months of good behavior.
“Like I said from day one, I wasn’t wrong,” Oakley said, per the New York Daily News.
Oakley originally planned to fight the charges, but ultimately decided it was merely a waste of taxpayer money.
“Why keep wasting time?” Oakley said in Manhattan Criminal Court. “Let’s try to keep the streets better for kids instead of going to court.”
Oakley was facing assault, harassment and trespassing charges, and his lawyer, Alex Spiro, said they plan to pursue “all civil remedies” against Dolan.
“It shows that nobody thought he did anything wrong,” Spiro said of the deal, per the Daily News. “It reaffirms what everybody has always thought which was that the Garden was wrong in how they treated him, and he doesn’t need a trial to prove that because the judge just ordered it.”
Thumbnail photo via Jeremy Brevard/USA TODAY Sports Images
