A night which will live in infamy at the World’s Most Famous

“Our policy is and will continue to be that if you are disrespectful to anyone in our venues, we will ask you not to return.” 

The words of a Madison Square Garden Company spokesperson in 2019, the night a fan yelled to James Dolan that he should sell the team, to which the most powerful man in the building responded, “You want to not come to any more games?” After the fan said it was an opinion, Dolan said, “It’s not an opinion. Enjoy watching them on TV.” He banned them from the arena for life.  

Later that year an unknown congressman from Staten Island joked with paparazzi – who for some reason were following a congressman from Staten Island – that due to the Knicks failing year after year after decade after decade, Dolan should sell the team. Dolan’s reaction was swift.

“Max Rose thinks he can make our team and my ownership his political platform,” Dolan wrote in an email to his friends. “I need to let him know that we will not stand for this. The best way to do this is to help his opponent. He is in a tight race for the US Congress in Staten Island . . . help send a strong message to all NY politicians that the Knicks will not be their political ticket to reelection. The most you can donate is $2,800. I cannot do this alone due to the limit on campaign contributions.”

Remember: this wasn’t someone in the Garden within earshot of the owner. This was a conversation between Rose and a rather sad paparazzo, out in the land of the free, where opinions are legal. Or supposed to be.

“It’s not like we’re unaware that fans are unhappy with the Knicks performance,” Dolan said, calling it “very disrespectful to [Rose’s] own constituents that they would think that this is something that would help them make up their mind about who should represent them in Congress.” He also said this: “I think we’re going to start taking more aggressive positions, particularly in New York politics. New York is really a one-party city, particularly the city. I don’t think that’s healthy democracy. I think that you will see us be very pro-two party democracy and do more to help balance the scales.”

Three nights ago, the World’s Most Famous Arena slandered, slurred and threatened people from a who’s who of quintessentially NYC communities: Puerto Rican, Black, Palestinian, Jewish, refugee. A career criminal and convicted felon waxed about weaponizing the federal government against his opponents, deporting the lead prosecutor in the election interference and classified documents case. A Goebbels fetishist whose family is from Russia talked about “America is for Americans and Americans only.” 

Dolan felt balancing the scales of a healthy democracy meant granting the biggest platform possible to a seditionist one week before the election. The gesture wasn’t missed by its intended audience. 

“Selling out the Garden means the MAGA movement has now arrived. It’s Madison Square Garden, it’s the center of everything, and to have this place filled with MAGA hats and Trump supporters really goes to show you it’s not just the surprise win of 2016 — it’s a nationwide movement.” The neo-Nazi who said this Sunday once tried to frame a group of protestors by planting a “Rape Melania” sign at their protest. That neo-Nazi is welcome at Madison Square Garden. Charles Oakley isn’t. 

A few weeks after the 2023 Knicks’ season ended, Amtrak, the MTA and NJ Transit released a report that concluded Madison Square Garden imposes “severe constraints on [Penn] Station that impede[s] the safe and efficient movement of passengers and and restrict[s] efforts to implement improvements.” Dolan’s reaction was swift. “We are disappointed to see this compatibility report,” the Garden responded, “ . . . considering how we have been cooperating throughout this process. This is the opinion of a few and not all stakeholders involved.” Imagine someone thinking their cooperation, their mere existence entitles them to whatever they want in life. You don’t have to imagine. We endure it every day. For how much longer?

Authoritarianism looks absurd from the outside. Sustainability doesn’t tend toward radical imbalance; not in nature, not in climate and not in societies. Three public agencies representing millions of people are not “the opinion of a few.” Dolan wasn’t threatened by a fan or a congressman saying sell the team. Yet he responded to each with a level of force so disproportionate if it were physical it'd be abuse.

It hurt more than I have words for hearing someone call my people and their homeland garbage. I took such joy and pride when Renaldo Balkman, who’s Puerto Rican, played for the Knicks, and especially when Carmelo Anthony did. I take pride in being raised by Nuyoricans. I’ve taken pride in Madison Square Garden, a place made special by all the people who came to the prior Madison Square Gardens, and who made the current one the Mecca long before Dolan started suckling from it, all those Puerto Ricans and Blacks and Palestinians and Jews and refugees who cheered for the Knicks when they sucked, and ticket prices weren’t out of reach. What Dolan elevated Sunday hurt because the illogic behind it is so dark, and so dangerous.

In 1948, the Ley de La Mordaza made it a crime in Puerto Rico to fly a Puerto Rican flag, sing a patriotic Puerto Rican song, speak or write about Puerto Rican independence or meet with anyone who supported it. The invading country told the invaded people they were a threat — to the invaders and to themselves. The bully painting the victim as the threat and passing judgment on them is a gaslighting, an insanity colonized peoples recognize like their mother tongue. Those calls are now coming from inside the house, America.

A fan and an anonymous politician say something Dolan doesn’t like; one is banned for life from MSG, the other swept out of office. The public rail agencies say MSG gets in the way of changes that could make day-to-day life easier for millions of people. We know how far Dolan went to punish Rose for offending him; what would he do faced with a far bigger threat to his comfort? There was one occasion when his insistence on his victimhood was rejected with emphasis – $11.6 million’s worth.

After Dolan and the Garden were ordered to pay punitive damages to Anucha Browne Sanders after the jury that heard her sexual harrassment case against MSG awarded her more than $11 million, the white billionaire boss of the company where Sanders — a Black woman — was officially, legally victimized still insisted he was the oppressed, the one the system is stacked against. “People told me when you’re in these kind of trials that it’s stacked against you,” he said, “. . . the big employer versus, particularly, a minority woman.” 

I don’t know where to separate fandom from politics. My love for the Knicks precedes James Dolan and will outlive us both. I don’t know how to separate, or how much longer I can, “Yay, Knicks! Rangers! MSG!” from “There’s the person wielding an obscene amount of power he didn’t earn that he’s using to advance a cause that explicitly hates and hopes to harm me and my people.” I don’t know what you’ll take from any of this. If you made it this far, I leave you with something I take hope from: the reminder that no matter how distant and powerful power can seem, when enough of us come together it’s powerless before us.