Former NBA player Charles Oakley accepted a one-year ban as part of a plea deal Friday to resolve a Feb. 8 incident with stadium personnel at Madison Square Garden during a New York Knicks game.
The deal would result in charges of assault, harassment and trespassing being dropped if Oakley can avoid being arrested for 6 months and stay away from Madison Square Garden for a year, according to Bleacher Report.
The charges stemmed from a fight with security personnel at the stadium when they tried to eject Oakley after a verbal altercation with team/stadium owner James Dolan, The Washington Post reported.
Oakley rejected a similar deal in June and maintains that he didn’t do anything wrong during the incident. Oakley’s attorney Alex Spiro said that he is considering pursuing a civil case against Dolan regarding the incident, and said the plea deal showed that "nobody thought he did anything wrong," the Post reported.
"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," Spiro said, according to the Post.
The deal did not require Oakley to plead guilty to any crime, and his record will be expunged if he meets the terms set forth in the deal.
Oakley spent 19 seasons in the NBA, playing 10 of those with the Knicks from 1988-98. He was part of the NBA’s all-defensive team and the team that got to the NBA finals in 1993-94, according to Bleacher Report.
Many Twitter users joined Oakley in blaming Dolan for the incident.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.