Charles Oakley Criticizes New York Knicks for Not Hiring Him and Patrick Ewing


According to former New York Knicks forward Charles Oakley, the team won’t give him a job because he’s too honest. Oak also blasts team owner James Dolan for failing to bring Patrick Ewing onboard as a coach. Per the NY Daily News: ”The 48-year-old has heard it’s because he’s too critical of his former team — a no-no at the Garden, as Marv Albert also discovered. ‘They say I’m hard on them. I say, I’m not hard on them; that’s just the way the game goes and people have opinions,’ Oakley said. ‘Ex-players I talk to, they say, ‘Management, they like you. But sometimes it’s the way you say things, the way you do things. I don’t know. I try to keep it simple and up front. I feel like I owe that to the fans with them coming to watch me for 10 years, following me, being a fan of mine. I feel I’m not going to let them down because somebody else wants to say something else … (Dolan) shouldn’t be mad at me because all I did was come before him and play the hardest and the best I could do. I’m going to be a Knick for life, though, no matter what people say.’ Oakley was also critical of the way the Knicks have treated Ewing, who was offered a D-League coaching job instead of the Knicks’ assistant gig given to LaSalle Thompson. Ewing declined the D-League offer. ‘That’s embarrassing,’ Oakley said. ‘How can you offer Patrick a D-League coaching job? I think it’s embarrassing. No matter what a person did to you or whatever over the years, his agent or somebody. That’s Kindergarten. This man has been the coach for 10 years and you’re going to offer him a Kindergarten job. Totally disrespectful. Then you’re going to hire a guy, LaSalle Thompson, that had nothing to do with the Knicks.’”