Charles Oakley was arrested at Madison Square Garden in the first quarter of the Knicks-Clippers game for yelling at James Dolan and then fighting security.
Never, ever, ever fight Charles Oakley. Unless ...
There’s only a few unlikely scenarios that would warrant throwing hands with Oak.
Oakley is well-known as a terrifying man, in the sense that he could probably beat up God if he wanted to. During his NBA career, he was a feared enforcer who got into a multitude of fights.
After his arrest, I wondered if there’s ever a situation that would call for someone to engage Oakley willingly, and how desperate it has to be for a human being to make such a bad decision. Here’s what I came up with:
You come home from work and the gym. You’ve spent the last two hours doing one or two reps at a machine before spending the rest of the time on your phone, so obviously you’re tired. You go to turn on the lights only to find out that the bulb went out. “Centennial Light, my ass,” you mumble.
And that’s when you notice a very large figure seated in your living room chair.
Before you can ask who he is and what he’s doing in your house, he addresses you.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he says. He sounds like Carmelo Anthony, so you reply, “Wait, Carmelo Anthony?”
He darts up. “No, I’m not Carmelo Anthony! I’m …” and then there’s an awkward silence between the two of you as he tries to think of a code name. “Never mind who I am! The point is that I have your wife and kids and the only way that you’re getting them back is if you bring me Phil Jackson’s Book of Zen before midnight. Otherwise ...”
Immediately you have a lot of questions, like “what is going on?” and “why that book?” and of course, “what wife and kids?”
He says that once he has that book, Jackson will be powerless and he can defeat him. He tells you that the book is in Jackson’s office in Madison Square Garden and that it’s being guarded day and night by Charles Oakley. You will have to defeat him in hand-to-hand combat to get it.
“Charles Oakley?” you ask incredulously. “You’re crazy, I’m not doing that. He once took someone’s baby out of a man’s hands before he slapped him.”
The shadowy figure then tells you that if you don’t complete the mission, you’ll never save your parents, which is odd because he supposedly had your wife and kids; but before you can gather more, he’s gone. Just like Carmelo Anthony to disappear when you need him.
Anyways, you get in your car and begin driving to Madison Square Garden. It suddenly starts snowing hard, which is odd considering that climate change is a Chinese hoax. As you contemplate this at a stop light, a bewildered man rambling about a unicorn runs right past your car. You look closer and notice that the man looks just like a disheveled Derrick Rose. Whatever, there’s no time for that. Your parents and/or wife and kids need you.
When you arrive at MSG, Joakim Noah is there waiting for you. He tells you that before you can get to Oakley, you will need to defeat him and a few others.
“I’m sworn to defend Phil Jackson at any cost,” he says. “It’s written in my $72 million contract.”
He slowly lunges at you, but before he can reach you, his body breaks down and disintegrates into dust. Somehow he manages to miss a layup in the process.
You run into three people next. They all look alike. You really can’t tell them apart. They start beating you up. Badly. I mean elbows and everything. It’s awful actually, you’re not even fighting back. Then it hits you — not just their boots to your face, but who they are and how to defeat them. They are the Plumlee brothers and you need to point out which one is Marshall for it to end. Emboldened, you pull out your phone and hold it up in the air. A video of Blake Griffin continuously posterizing Marshall starts playing and you notice one of them wince at the sight. To him you whisper, “Cody Zeller is better than you’ll ever be.”
A tear rolls down his eye, and Marshall collapses into the arms of his brothers, who take him away.
It’s almost midnight now and you run towards Jackson’s office. Two James Dolans appear in your path. They speak in unison: “One of us always lies and the other always tells the truth. Before you can go inside and face Charles Oakley, you must point out which one of us is the liar and which one is honest based on our following declarations.”
The first says: “The Knicks will be relevant in five years.”
The second says: “The Knicks will be relevant in 10 years.”
You think about the current job of the Phil Jackson regime, about the Linsanity period, the Mike Woodson era, the collapse of the Amar’e Stoudemire and Anthony duo, Mike D’Antoni and J.R. Smith, their attempt at wooing LeBron James, losing by 50 points to Dallas, selecting Jordan Hill eighth in the draft, Isiah Thomas as President and the fact they haven’t won a championship since 1973. It’s a trick question.
“The Knicks will never be relevant again,” you proclaim. “They will hit a new rock bottom every year.”
The Dolans nod to each other and smile. They open the door.
Inside you see the gray, but still very large and intimidating Oakley. Like, he’s pretty big. He’s scary as hell. As you go to explain to him that you need the book to save your parents and the wife and kids you never knew you had, he grabs you by the neck, lifts you off the ground with one arm and slaps you continuously with the other hand until you pass out from the pain.
You wake up outside on the ground. A large, bald man is standing over you. As your senses come to you, you realize that it’s Charles Barkley. “There’s never a time where you should try to fight Oakley. Leave that man alone,” he says. He starts laughing derisively, calls you turrible and walks off.
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