Producers' Pick | Charles Oakley: Outrageous Stories From His Long NBA Career

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Visit Samsung.com to learn more about Galaxy Z Fold 4. It's just who he is, but he's a good guy. I mean, he used to rough up Jordan back in the day.

Right. And Michael was mad. Michael didn't understand why they traded Oak.

Well, you know why? They had to get Bill Cartwright, I guess. That was John Salley, one of the funniest guys, a real good player on a very good team in Detroit. Talking about Charles Oakley, played 19th season in the NBA for the Bulls. The Knicks, most importantly, and the Raptors, Wizards, and Rockets, author of the brand new book, The Last Enforcer, outrageous stories from the life and times of one of the NBA's most fiercest competitors. And I don't think there's anyone who didn't respect Charles Oakley when he was in New York.

I had a chance to cover it when I was doing that prestigious job like sports phone and new sport and watch the magnificent Knicks teams that didn't win a championship, but man, were they good. Charles, congratulations on the book. Thank you.

Glad to be on your show. Yeah, Salley, he was a fun guy. It's a lot of story about me and Salley, but Salley's a hardworking guy, though. I know we got our ups and downs, but I like Salley more. I like Charles Oakley.

I know. And by the way, yeah, you don't like, Charles Oakley does not understand why you don't like him. Here's what he said.

Cut 43. Charles Oakley doesn't like me, which is no big deal. I don't like him or dislike him. I don't think about him. He's not important enough for me to think about. He don't like me.

I have no idea why. So why don't you like Charles Barkley? He said I'm not important, so why should I like him? But no, he think about me.

Because he know if he come in a room where I'm in that room, he gonna have to leave that room, so he thinking about me. Really, Charles? What happened? Well, you know, I go back a long ways. When he smacked me on my face, when he played for Phoenix, I don't play with people like that. And, you know, he's had great talent.

I understand that. He on TNT talking a lot of smack. And I guess that's what he had to do to be on TV. But I don't talk smack. If I got aggressive about something, I do that. I mean, like I say, Charles Barkley, you know, it's cool.

Like I said, if he walk in the room, I'm in the room, he gonna leave before me. I mean, I watched you play for ten years. At that point they let the press sit under the basket. So I know how hard you played. And the first time I saw you, Charles, I was doing play-by-play in color for the CW Post basketball team.

And Virginia Union. You were the scorer, and you were like, I mean, I expected you to average 30 in the NBA. And you had more rebounds. You were more of a power forward. But, I mean, you were dominant in the middle.

And Post was an elite Division II team. Well, you know, in his book I talk a lot about, but when you came, when I came to the league, you know, Virginia and Union, next to everybody in college, I had to adjust. I mean, I'm playing with Michael Jordan and some other score. So my game, when trying to come here, yeah, I'm a Division II player. I'm coming to show them I can change my game.

I can play with anyone. Right. And you're willing to earn it. You came from a rough neighborhood. You talk about having to take three buses just to get to high school. Where did the gumption go to go through this?

A lot of kids would be like, you know what, I can't afford this or I'm not going to go for three buses to get to school. Why did you, why were you determined to get through it and then get to college? I didn't want to let my, for my grandparents and my mother and my aunts and my sisters and brother, I didn't want to let no one down because, you know, getting up to see your mother, getting up to go to work, had to catch two buses ourselves and make it, sacrifice for the kids and, you know, do better.

You know, get, get some of the meals in the table for us on the weekends because basically when your parents are working two jobs, basically you had the big meal on the weekend and during the week you had to eat what you could eat, you know. I hear you. So you, you were Division II player of the year, to over 2,379 points, 1,600 plus rebounds. Did you know you were destined for the NBA and what was it like being drafted by the Bulls when you were?

Well, you know, in the book I talk about my journey and my journey, I didn't know. At the time when I was in Cleveland High School, it was, Cleveland was kind of, it was real bad. And so I chose to go to Virginia Union. I only came home one time in four years because it was, it was getting to be a bad time while my friends were getting in trouble, going to jail, on the street, selling drugs.

And I, I escaped it when I went to college. I didn't want to be close to home. I didn't want to be two hours away.

I want to be eight to ten hours away. So I couldn't just drive home on the weekend and see the family. But it was just about going to school and finding new friends and I did.

I found a lot of new friends at Virginia Union. So you get drafted by the Bulls. What was your first, what was your first thought about the roster and why did you hit it off so well with Michael Jordan who wrote the forward to your book, Charles? What was it about your game that he respected? Matter of fact, talking about Michael Jordan, we just talked this morning. It was just my awareness that, you know, hey, I'm from a small school.

I know I have to come into work. I had to compete every day and show them that they drafted me for a reason. They made the trade for a reason to bring me to Chicago to help build that team. And, you know, even though we didn't win a championship, I think that I was something that the foundation, like I came to New York with a foundation and I think that when we get a foundation that you knew Chicago was going to win it until later.

But unfortunately, I wasn't there. But, you know, you can know they were going to win a championship because Michael was peaking in his game. They got Scott and Horace and you see the Kimmies that started coming together. Yeah, and then we watched the last dance again.

I wonder what you thought. So you missed the championship run, but you brought him to the doorstep, got traded to the Knicks and then battled the Bulls the whole time. Here's Patrick Ewing talking about you.

Cut 41. The coaches around the league are starting to give him the recognition that he deserves and the respect that he deserves. I think he's definitely one of the best par fours in the game. That was him when playing. But you were not enamored with Patrick.

Do you think that's accurate? You saw there were times when he was not as dominant that he was in college and you thought the effort was sometimes lacking? I think he in his book, I talk about, you know, just everybody have opinions. Scotty had opinions about Michael and I think he's the GOAT. I don't think Patrick the GOAT or the Senators are, you know, not even top 10 players and still is the GOAT. But my thing with Patrick is I was just saying, you know, be an IQ for basketball that you watch films and go back and the way that I was watching the highlight of the day. And that's one of my things I was saying, like, when Hakeem got double teamed, we was in the finals, he threw the ball out to the rookie. My thing with Patrick, I don't think he trusts us enough because he always shot and when he got double teamed, he still shot the ball. When you shoot out double teamed, I mean, you don't trust the players or you're a little selfish.

But my thing is, yeah, he played hard but not as hard as I think he played in Georgetown. I mean, that's my opinions about him. So if he has opinions about me, it's okay. I have no problem with that. You always said it like it was. But with Patrick in particular, would you tell him when you were playing, like, hey, man, we're open.

You got options. You didn't have to double... Well, you know, Patrick, then he get a little moody. You know, Patrick was a, he wasn't an easy guy to play with, first of all.

Everybody in the city, that's why the management offered him a D. Lee job. He should have been more of a big brother to everybody, but he wasn't. So I think to win a championship, you have to go through adversity. He never wanted to challenge that. You think about Colby, Mike, LeBron, Magic Bird, they all went through adversity. If you're a beat writer in New York, you know what I'm talking about because he never gave nobody nothing to write about. So it's part of his basketball game too.

Right. Jeter was the same way. Never really said much, you know, but they won championships. Here's Pat Riley talking about why he always kept you on the court late, cut 40. We need him on the court to win. I made a huge mistake last year. You know, when everybody talks about, you know, what happened in game five, probably the biggest thing that happened is that he was sitting on the bench in the last 25 seconds of that game. And so I've tried to make a commitment to myself to keep him, Patrick, on the court regardless of what's going on in the fourth quarter.

So it was from 1994, 95. You remember that? Yeah, he made two mistakes, the Reza Miller mistake and the Charles Miller mistake. So I'm glad he, you know, he man up about it.

But that's why I was talking about adjustment. I talk about this in my book. I mean, I don't just talk about Patrick. You know, it's just, it's one life that when you're around people, everybody got something you can talk about when you don't win a championship, they make it talk about, I ain't getting enough rebound. But when you see you, when you see that, you know, they, they Pat Riley admit that that'd mean a lot to me because, and that's what I was talking about.

We had teammates and we always have stuff that, you know, teaming you open up into like that, this and that. I don't think, you know, from a coach's standpoint that they didn't force Patrick to pass out of the post or not. Like you see some, you know, guys up where you double team, he should reverse the ball. You know, everybody think I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm blasting Patrick, but because of that, no, just, I'm going to think that when you have a chance to win a championship and your best player, you know, like Joe burrow, I mean, even though he lost Sunday, but you know, he got the inspector, he got the inspector and you know, them type of guys who put team, he put that team was back this year, Cincinnati.

He didn't win it, but you can see that he got them there and then, you know, had a chance to win. We went out to the last one minute and what, you know, five seconds, 25 seconds. No, I, no, I hear you. And we just, I just saw so many great players. It seems to me, Charles, you're the expert, but basketball's changed so much since you played.

I mean, they, they do date. There's not the physicality anymore. There's really no big men dominating. And that was the big attraction with Shaq and Akim Oijuan and Patrick Ewing and Alonzo Mourning and you on the power. There was a much more physicality of it. Do you like it better when you played or would you like to play in this era? I play both eras, but that's a big question as a big debate these days because the younger guys will be 10 if they turn and start competing, you know, start comparing us to the eighties and nineties. We don't play that we play sexy, but it's a global league.

I hate to get into the younger guys. I mean, it is what it is. We had no tattoos. They got all the tattoos. We didn't shoot a lot of threes. They shoot a lot, a lot of threes. We made a free throw. They miss a lot of free throws. So it is a here and there.

So however you want it, you know, you want to go to the movies or you want to go to next week. So everything can change since back in the eighties and nineties. So, yeah, the games is kind of hard to watch. Sometimes, you know, they don't take me towards, you know, turnovers and free throws. I think that's important. The possession of, you know, four or five turnovers in the fourth quarter and then missed five, six free throws. That wouldn't happen in eight and then because you couldn't shoot free throws.

You didn't play the last three minutes of the game. From the Fox News Podcast Network. I'm Janis Dean, Fox News senior meteorologist.

Be sure to subscribe to the Janis Dean podcast at Fox News podcast dot com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And don't forget to spread the sunshine. Charles Oakley, my guest, Charles, another time we crossed paths. I got the word Charles Oakley's opening up a car wash and I go, great.

I go, is he going to be available for interviews? And I go, yeah. So I get in the car with my shooter. I go down there and you were washing cars.

You didn't want anything to do with the press. You're like, I got a business to run. So that's the hard work at me. You know, work come first. But my thing about always get a press interview, I might have just said that.

Let me watch these cars. But I never turned y'all away. That's true. So this one incident comes. So people, by the way, if you love basketball, love sports, you will love this book.

Frank Isola is a great writer and he wrote the book with you and he was your beat writer. He got banned from MSG, I think, too, by the Knicks. So James Dolan throws you out of Madison Square Garden. Everyone saw the scene. It's part of the reason which I believe the word is that a lot of superstar players don't want to go to New York because you are so respected around the league and the way he treated you.

Here is how it sounded. Cut 44. Charles Oakley is involved in something. They need security in a big way.

Security is there. Oakley now being taken off. And this is an ugly thing to see about a guy who played here for over ten years with terrific player Oakley and the Knicks organization have not seen eye to eye recently. Oakley has been very critical about them. The Knicks organization not happy with that.

So it hasn't been a good relationship over the last several years. You hear some fans chanting Oakley. He was a beloved player. And Oakley pushing off there, obviously upset at something. So Charles, they escorted you out of the building. What happened? It was crazy. I mean, it just came out of nowhere.

It's like getting hit from a blind side. But I don't know what happened. All I know, I was sitting there ordering some popcorn and a Pepsi and talking to the fans. Next thing I know, here come eight guys walking up on me and telling me I have to leave. I'm like, for what? They sort of grabbed on me.

I think I was trying to protect myself. Number two is this is so embarrassing for the NBA and their fans to see something like that. This man is consistently over and over. He keeps messing with people, throwing people out, banning people from coming in there. And I played with his dad.

It was nothing like this. I don't know. The NBA, they got a problem. He's the problem for the NBA. My thing is, you're not winning, but you're embarrassing the league.

Year after year, you keep embarrassing the league about something. Somebody said something to you. Don't come to the game. If you're scared, that's the end.

Stay home. Yeah, anyone who yells at Jimmy Dolan, James Dolan, gets thrown out of the game. And I guess he doesn't like you were critical, they try to throw you out. And the crowd starts chanting Oakley because they love you at the Garden. Anyone who watches you play just appreciates the way you play. Here's Dolan explaining himself.

Cut 45. We need to keep the Garden a place that's comfortable and safe for everybody who goes there. Anybody who comes to the Garden, whether they've been drinking too much alcohol, they're looking for a fight, they're abusive, disrespectful to the staff and the fans, they're going to be ejected and they're going to be banned. Because everybody has a right to come to that game, to come to those games and enjoy them. And no one has the right to take that away from everybody else.

And in this case, that did happen. We're going to put the ban in place and hopefully, you know, it won't be forever. Where does it stand? Where does it stand?

Wow. He sounds like he already had a drink, the way he sounds. Where it stands, it's the other thing.

In court, we're going to let it play out. And he's just over the top. I mean, you sell alcohol, number one, and you're an alcoholic. You shouldn't even be around alcohol because you've been to the clinic and you're calling someone else like they've got a problem.

How do you know when someone's got an issue and you haven't had a drink with them? So it's just a lot of BS and I wish it wouldn't have happened because the fans deserve a lot more. And like I said, as long as this man on the team, ain't no superstar going to come there. You'll get a lot of B players in the free agency and you're going to have to overplay your players. And they should have signed Lonzo Ball this summer. They needed a guy who could control the team, a guy who was a leader. They don't want to come. They're struggling right now. They don't have a leader. They have a lot of guys, young, who are all looking at the rim.

And until they get somebody to be a leader, they can define guys like this New York. And you've got to play. They've been losing so long. And the fans, last year, they just throw it to them. And this year, it's a letdown. You go from 10 games over $500 to 10 games under $500 and you're paying guys maximum money.

And think about the ticket prices. The last and fourth of the name of the book. If you love sports, you will love this book. Charles Oakley, it was a pleasure watching you play. Congratulations. I hope it's a huge bestseller.