Charles Oakley incident gets Madison Square Garden security chief fired

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Most fans have heard about the incident between the New York Knicks and team legend Charles Oakley by now.

Oakley had a confrontation with the security team at Madison Square Garden a few days ago and was forcibly removed from the arena before being arrested.

Friday, the Knicks fired fired senior vice president for security Frank Benedetto, according to the New York Post:

A source told the website that more staff could be fired in the wake of the incident, though the Garden has steadfastly maintained that an “abusive” Oakley was to blame.

“We don’t comment on employees that have left the company,” Madison Square Garden Company spokesman Barry Watkins told the website Friday.

This is Oakley’s side of the story:

“I was there for four minutes,” Oakley said late Wednesday night. “I didn’t say anything to him. I swear on my mother. They came over and wanted to know why I was sitting there. I bought the ticket. I said why do you guys keep staring at me. Then they asked me to leave. And I said I’m not leaving”

This will probably never amount to more than a he-said, she-said sort of ordeal. But it is telling the Knicks are now letting go of folks involved in the incident. It doesn’t do much good to speculate on why this is occurring, though the incident itself or how the team removed Oakley could be the root of the problem here.

Either way, the Knicks and Oakley aren’t close to patching things up.

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