Charles Oakley: Knicks cannot back down from Joel Embiid
Charles Oakley (left) offered his insight on how the Knicks can deal with Joel Embiid (right). Credit: Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images; Matt Slocum/AP
PHILADELPHIA
The Knicks can’t let Joel Embiid get away with this.
They can’t let him bully them around. They can’t let him change the tenor and direction of their first-round playoff series against the 76ers. They need to send a message loud and clear that they don’t care that Embiid is last year’s MVP and a monster of a man on the court; they aren’t going to stand for his antics.
This isn’t coming from me. This is coming from Charles Oakley, the biggest, baddest enforcer ever to wear a Knicks uniform.
“They’ve got to do something about it,” Oakley told me Friday when I reached out to get advice for the Knicks. “I wouldn’t be shaking their hands before the game when they play, friends or no friends. I wouldn’t shake Embiid’s hand or anyone’s hand. We are on a mission.”
Like many Knicks fans, Oakley believes that Embiid should have been hit with a flagrant 2 and been kicked out of the game for his dangerous takedown of Mitchell Robinson with 4:34 left in the first quarter in the Knicks’ 125-114 Game 3 loss.
The foul led to a near dustup between the teams. A replay that has gone viral of the incident shows Embiid yelling, “What are you gonna do?” at Donte DiVincenzo and then OG Anunoby after they got in his face.
Oakley, for one, knows what he would have done to Embiid.
“I probably would have smacked him,” Oakley said.
Oakley wants to make it clear he is not advocating outright violence, per se. But he says the Knicks have to set the tone of Sunday’s Game 4 early so Embiid doesn’t think they can be pushed around.
“You can’t let him send that kind of message,” Oakley said. “If he had done something like that [when Oakley played], he wouldn’t have gotten away with it. David Robinson, when he played, he knew what he could get away with. They [bullies] pick a fight they think they are going to win.”
Embiid, who guaranteed a series win after the Knicks took a two-games-to-none lead at the Garden, finished with a career playoff-high 50 points. Given that his conditioning isn’t at its peak after he missed two months with a knee injury, Oakley said the Knicks need to make him work for every point — and maybe stick out a few elbows themselves.
“If I’m the Knicks, this is what I do. I’m putting him in every pick-and-roll,” Oakley said. “Make him work . . . Then you might want to set a hard pick on him. Let’s see how it feels when someone puts you out there.”
As far as Oakley is concerned, the 76ers have a rich tradition of guys who try to get under your skin. Oakley was a part of the last playoff series between the two franchises, a Knicks sweep in the first round in 1989. Oakley and Charles Barkley laid the seeds for their long-running feud in that series, a feud that culminated in the two slapping each other during a 1994 regular-season game.
Oakley, whose autobiography is aptly entitled “The Last Enforcer,” had 4,421 career fouls, fourth in NBA history behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone and Robert Parish. He finished his career with 168 technical fouls and 24 flagrant fouls, and he was beloved by his teammates for the fact that he always had their back.
Embiid’s bad-guy stats — 54 regular-season technical fouls and 16 flagrant fouls — are even more eye-popping considering the era he plays in and that he has played in 433 games to Oakley’s 1,282.
Oakley is a huge fan of this Knicks team and wants nothing more than to see them get by the 76ers. He is particularly high on point guard Jalen Brunson, who he thinks can lead the Knicks to new heights.
“He’s doing a great job. He’s probably doing the greatest job since Walt Frazier,” Oakley said. “He’s a scorer and a leader. That’s great for a franchise guy. Talent-wise, they are good at what they do, and he has them consistently playing hard.”
Oakley doesn’t want to see the 76ers use a dirty play to turn the series. He said it shouldn’t matter that Embiid is the biggest guy on the court, noting that players don’t have to be big to be tough.
“He’s big. He’s like a load of timber wood,” Oakley said. “But you know what happens to wood when they say, ‘Timber.’ ”
Oakley says it’s time for the Knicks to sharpen that saw.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
