After his release from a New York police station early Thursday morning, Charles Oakley insisted he had done nothing to provoke an altercation with Madison Square Garden security guards that led to arrest on charges of assault and criminal trespassing. In several interviews since the stunning incident that was captured during a nationally televised broadcast on ESPN and quickly became the most sensational story in the sport, the former New York Knicks power forward has maintained that his ejection from the World’s Most Famous Arena stemmed from a single source: Knicks owner James L. Dolan not wanting the longtime fan favorite in the gym.

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Oakley, 53, first shared his side of the story with Frank Isola of the New York Daily News, saying he swore “on [his] mother” that he hadn’t said a word to Dolan, the owner whom Oakley says has refused to speak or meet with him over the years about the possibility of returning to the franchise in some capacity. During a subsequent interview at Jimmy’s NYC, a bar/restaurant on West 38th Street in Manhattan, Oakley offered more:

Oakley went into greater detail during a call into Stephen A. Smith’s ESPN Radio show on Thursday afternoon, which began with an apology to Knicks fans and those in attendance at MSG on Wednesday (“You never want to be a troublemaker in life, and it was just a bad scene”) and continued by making the scene look even worse:

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Scott Cacciola of the New York Times, who wrote a feature back in November detailing Oakley’s estrangement from the franchise for which he starred from 1988 through 1998, noted Thursday on Twitter that Oakley had claimed security has its eye on him every time he visits his old workplace:

Oakley expounded on that during his interview with Smith:

In the aftermath of the scuffle with security, accounts varied about what exactly touched off the incident that led with Oakley being hauled out of MSG in handcuffs.

The Daily News reported that “sources at the Garden and police sources dispute Oakley’s account of the altercation, saying the scuffle was provoked by the former Knick yelling at his longtime nemesis Dolan.” Shortly after Oakley’s ejection, the Knicks issued a statement to similar effect:

But another fan in the area, Ian Schafer, who shot video of the incident …

… told the News that “it didn’t look like he started anything, to be honest. It looked like he was provoked in some way, because it didn’t look like there was any buildup to anything happening.”

Other witnesses shared stories similar to Schafer’s. From Yaron Weitzman of Bleacher Report:

From Mike Vorkunov of the New York Times:

A fan-shot video published Thursday by the New York Post shows Oakley raising his hands over his head as security personnel crowd him, with one holding his left arm, before Oakley falls to the ground. After regaining his feet, Oakley appears to resume talking to a police officer, reacting physically only after a second MSG staffer again crowds him and begins to reach for Oakley’s right arm. Things escalated from there.

“Send a New York cop to tell Oakley he’s gotta leave. Escort me out of the building. I have to respect that,” Oakley told Smith on Thursday. “It was a cop there. Every time he asked me something, I did it. I did it. I did it. You can call the precinct, and I told them there. It was the other guys. They went over bounds, for no reason. I might have touched some guys, but they touched me. I got a right. So, they want to charge me with three counts [of assault], I’m going to have to go to court and see what happens.” (Sports Illustrated’s Michael McCann has more on the legal ins and outs of Oakley’s present predicament.)

Many have suggested that Dolan’s unwillingness to even acknowledge Oakley stems from the vocal ex-enforcer’s openness in critiquing a Knicks franchise that has made just five playoff appearances, and one trip past the first round of the postseason, since 2000, the year after Dolan took the reins of the Knicks franchise from his father, Charles Dolan. Under the son’s leadership, the franchise has cycled through players, coaches, executives, embarrassments and scandals at a rate far outpacing the rest of the NBA.

As SB Nation’s Kristian Winfield noted Thursday, Oakley hasn’t been shy about sharing his opinions on that. As Isola wrote, it’s possible that’s why Dolan’s refused Oakley’s attempts to settle their differences.

“I’ve been saying the same things I’ve been saying since ’88, when I came to New York,” Oakley told Smith on Thursday. “So if it’s critical, it’s critical. I ain’t critical, man. You’re more critical! Other people on the air are a billion times more critical […] Say, like, this year. Somebody ask me how many games the Knicks are gonna win. I said between 37 and 42. I mean, what am I supposed to say? ‘They’re going to win 60?’ I mean, look at the talent, what they got. Come on. It is what it is.

“But I don’t have nothing personal against this man. I dove on the floor, took charges, I got banged up, and cry about nothing. Didn’t cry about how much money I made. I played for the love of the game, my teammates and the fans.”

After Wednesday’s incident, Oakley received public support from a number of past NBA players, like Reggie Miller, Greg Anthony, Stephen Jackson and Jayson Williams, and from today’s biggest stars:

“That’s another smack in the face, like when the security guard came over there and tried to tell me to leave,” Oakley told Smith of the closing line of the Wednesday night statement. “[…] I don’t know. They want to be cute with the statement. That’s cool, though. I mean, you can’t trust my character and all this? It’s cool. You trusted it for 10 years when I played. I’m the same guy. They want to say that, be all harsh about things, I can deal with it.”

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Seemingly undeterred by either the massive amount of public support for Oakley from Knicks fans and NBA players, or the very public questioning of why the Knicks would treat one of their franchise legends this way by several of the sport’s top present-day stars, the Knicks responded to Oakley’s late Wednesday and Thursday interviews with an “updated statement.”

So, not content to just physically drag a franchise legend out of Madison Square Garden and press charges against him, the Knicks have now double down on their stance and called a player who averaged a double-double for them over the course of a decade a bald-faced liar, and done it all within 48 hours of team president Phil Jackson co-signing a column claiming that current top star Carmelo Anthony, whom the franchise is intent on pushing out of town, lacks the will to win.

We have now reached the point in the program where REGGIE FREAKING MILLER is the voice of reason in a matter involving the New York Knicks:

The lesson, as always: the state of James Dolan’s New York Knicks can always, always, always be more embarrassing.

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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