Former NBA Player Charles Oakley Says Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Wants to Purchase Knicks

Former Knicks player Charles Oakley claimed in a recent interview that Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, is considering purchasing the Knicks from current Owner James Dolan.

It was not clear if Oakley was speaking with insider knowledge, or just guessing. However, in an interview with The Ringer, Oakley told Bill Simmons and Jason Concepcion that Bezos wants to buy the team, the New York Post reported.

“I heard that Jeff Bezos wants to buy the Knicks,” Oakley exclaimed. “He was gonna try to do Amazon in Long Island City, and he went to Virginia. So he still wanted to do some real estate in New York. So why not buy the Garden?”

Oakley added that Bezos is one of the few people in the world that does not need any partners for such a purchase and could afford to buy the team outright.

“That’s someone you can’t question,” Oakley said. “It ain’t like he needs to get three or four other investors. He’s the investor, himself.”

There is no love lost between for former Knicks enforcer and Dolan.

Oakley was kicked out of Madison Square Garden in February of 2017 after a shouting match with several security guards. Oakley was even charged with misdemeanor assault charges over the incident, but the charges were later dropped. The former player later sued the Gardens over the incident.

Dolan himself has had altercations at the Gardens. In March, Dolan had a fan ejected from the arena when he started screaming at Dolan to sell the team. Dolan even went so far as to hand the fan a permanent ban from the place over the incident.

For his part, Oakley filed papers to force a federal judge to use the video of Dolan booting the fan as evidence in his own lawsuit against the Knicks owner.

Oakley went on to slap the Knicks around in the interview saying, “It’s too much problems with management, the fans. There’s too much going on with the team. Tanking. I think they’re going to get Kemba (Walker) and (Jimmy) Butler, before KD or Kyrie.”

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.