Oakley was a beloved Knicks forward in the 1990s, and he remains one of the few former players who has remained absent from MSG during the team’s recent playoff runs, culminating with this year’s NBA championship. His removal from the game was a jarring scene, but Sullivan ruled that Oakley hadn’t proven it was done with excessive force. “Ample evidence — including videos from multiple angles and the unanimous testimony of every witness (even, to some extent, Oakley himself) — shows that Oakley had a reasonable opportunity to depart the Garden, that he instead resorted to physical violence, and that he was never pushed to the ground,” Sullivan wrote. The judge added that “no rational jury could conclude that Oakley reasonably feared himself at risk of wrongful physical contact — let alone that MSG intended to stir such an apprehension.”
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: His removal from the game was a jarring scene, but …