The latest twist in the NBA’s now nearly week-long soap opera between Knicks owner James Dolan and Charles Oakley involves a meeting between the two parties, along with NBA commissioner Adam Silver and Michael Jordan being brought in via telephone.
Silver released a statement on Monday night following the meeting, noting that both sides had apologized for their roles in the incident that took place last Wednesday when Oakley was arrested and thrown out of Madison Square Garden, as well as apologizing for insults that had been hurled back and forth since. Dolan expressed hope that Oakley will return to MSG in the near future as his guest, and hopefully this puts an end to all of this foolishness that saw Dolan ban Oakley from the arena and accuse him of being an alcoholic.
Among those that have had enough of this nonsense is Charles Barkley, who was so fed up with having to talk about the statement from Adam Silver on Monday night’s TNT broadcast that he had to ask if the basketball right now is really that bad that the Oakley story is the best thing they have to talk about.
EJ, Chuck, Kenny & Shaq react to Adam Silver’s statement regarding Charles Oakley and the Knicks… pic.twitter.com/Nzo5qrk1Qh
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) February 14, 2017
“Listen, no disrespect, but I’m gonna go there,” Barkley said. “How bad is the NBA that we spend all our time talking about stuff that’s unimportant and insignificant?”
While I understand Barkley’s point that he’d rather talk about basketball, this is a pretty big deal that the owner of a team has banned one of the franchise’s all-time most beloved players from the arena.
