James Dolan pours lighter fluid on the raging dumpster fire that is the New York Knicks

Rarely are sports fans treated to a spectacle of such pyrotechnic intensity as the raging dumpster fire that was the New York Knicks this week.

This is about as low as it gets for a pro sports franchise: The team president appears to subtweet its star; one day later, a retired legend is tackled court-side by team security as appalled fans chant his name. Oh, and the team sucks too.

Put on that flame-retardant suit, reader. We're about to go dumpster diving. And at the bottom we'll find one James Dolan.

Charles Oakley is a Knicks legend of the '90s for his heart and toughness during New York's last sustained run as a respectable NBA team. Yet there he was at Madison Square Garden for a Knicks home game on Wednesday night -- not being feted for his years of passionate play or even simply taking in the game. No, there he was at the Garden being confronted by security, tackled by several men, then surrounded while on the ground, handcuffed and arrested. Video of the incident is surreal.

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Oakley has had a fraught relationship with the Knicks over the past decade, and it's not unbelievable he helped instigate and escalate the situation. But a fan favorite getting ganged up on by team security is a bad, bad look for a sports team anyway you slice it. A quick perusal of the #FreeOakley hashtag shows which side the people are on.

The Knicks' public relations department didn't do itself any favors by releasing a statement in which they said they "hope [Oakley] gets some help soon." Finally, making it all look even worse for Dolan, the Knicks' reviled owner, is that some of the NBA's biggest stars have backed Oakley on social media following the fracas.

Here's Chris Paul.

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Here's Dwyane Wade.

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LeBron James weighed in, too -- not once, but twice.

Then on Friday, Dolan made himself look even more petty and insecure by banning Oakley from the Garden indefinitely.

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Here's actor and big-time Knicks fan Michael Rappaport receiving news of the Oakley ban. We presume he speaks for all New Yorkers on this.

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Dolan also implied Friday that Oakley is an alcoholic, before adding a coy "we don't know." (This is an old trick of his, which we'll get back to in a minute.)

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This story gets even worse

Phil Jackson at a press conference last summer. Credit: Jacobson/AP/REX/Shutterstock

Further adding to the squalor is that this was the Knicks' second tragicomedy of the week. Previously, team president Phil Jackson appeared to subtweet a shot at team star Carmelo Anthony, which we covered in-depth here. Jackson later tweeted a garbled missive seeming to argue that his post had been "misunderstood." But by then the damage had been done.

Current players such as Paul, Wade and James aren't the only ones blasting the Knicks now. A Twitter post from retired NBA star and current television analyst Reggie Miller captures the perspective of many quite well.

New York -- for its passionate fans and status as the world's media capital -- is often assumed to be an attractive destination for free agents. Now, though? The Knicks are seen as the team whose president takes passive-aggressive public shots at its star, and whose retired legends get treated like doo-doo.

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The man at the center of it

Dolan has held New York's beloved franchise hostage for nearly 20 years now. He's the man The New York Times called "a consummate 1 percenter" in a headline two years ago.

Once, per the Times, a 72-year old fan sent Dolan a profanity-free letter complaining about the team's performance. Dolan went thermonuclear in his response.

Man of the people? Not quite. Dolan at a Knicks game. Credit: Seth Wenig/AP/REX/Shutterstock

“I am just guessing but I’ll bet your life is a mess and you are a hateful mess," he wrote back to the 72-year-old fan, per the Times. "In fact I’ll bet you are negative force in everyone who comes in contact with you. You most likely have made your family miserable. Alcoholic maybe.”

Sounds quite similar to the unfounded charge Dolan made about Oakley on Friday, right? But all of this is made even more seedy by the fact that Dolan has personal experience with the demons of addiction, as detailed in this 2002 Sports Illustrated profile. According to that profile, in 1993, when Dolan was nearly 40 years old, his father "personally" put him in rehab.

On one level some of this is funny -- a team president using Twitter to tweak his team's biggest star? Who does that? On another and more obvious level, it's sad.

And there's Dolan, lashing out as he presides over all the madness.

As long as he owns the team, Knicks fans should not expect success. But spectacle? That's a given.