Why Was Charles Oakley Escorted out of Madison Square Garden in 2017?

Although the Knicks do not have much of a history of winning, the team and their Madison Square Garden arena have long been considered one of the best places to play in the country. Charles Oakley was with the Knicks from 1988 to 1998, and even helped the team make an appearance in the finals.

In 2017, though, Charles was arrested at Madison Square Garden, and he hasn't been back to the arena since. Now, many want to know what happened to Charles and why he was arrested. Here's what we know:

Charles was at a Knicks game in 2017, and was seated near the team's owner, James Dolan. Security reportedly asked him to give up his seat, and when Charles refused, it led to an altercation and eventually his arrest.

"Me and four friends went to the game tonight to watch the Knicks and Clippers,” he explained to ESPN at the time. "We get there, sit down, trying to have a good time. Next thing I know I was asked to leave the building."

"I asked why, and he said, ‘Well, you have to leave because someone ordered you to leave.’ And I’m like, ‘I’ve been here four-and-a-half minutes, I’m a Knicks fan, I played here for 10 years, I love the Knicks,'" he explained. Ultimately, Charles was forced to leave and was then arrested, although the misdemeanor charge against him was dropped in 2018.

When asked whether he was still banned from Madison Square Garden during an episode of Watch What Happens Live, Charles said that he wasn't "banned-banned," but also said that he hadn't been back.

Host Andy Cohen said that the two of them should go to a game together sometime, and Charles said that he would be open to it, and then speculated that both of them might wind up banned.

In a 2024 interview with ESPN, Charles said that he wouldn't go back to Madison Square Garden until he received a formal apology from James Dolan. "They've got to apologize," he said. "We'll go from there. Can [Dolan] be man enough to say, 'Mistakes happen.' And he made one."

Charles has even filed assault and battery charges against James.

"Just be honest," the former Knicks enforcer said. "Just be transparent over what you put someone through and how you changed their life. This definitely changed my life. My daughter Googled me, they show them pulling me out of the Garden. That's bad. That's hell for a kid to see that."

"There's no kind of agreement. There's no kind of, 'Let's make this go away,'" he continued. "They're not being transparent about what happened."

For now, then, it seems there's still bad blood between the two, even as the Knicks as a team have improved. Whether Charles will ever be back at a Knicks game seems, at least for now, like it's very much an open question.