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For the third—and MSG Networks hopes, final—time, a federal judge has dismissed Charles Oakley’s assault-and-battery lawsuit over his removal from Madison Square Garden against his will during a New York Knicks-Los Angeles Clippers game in 2017. U.S. Circuit Judge Richard J. Sullivan on Friday granted MSG summary judgment, reasoning that the 62-year-old former Knicks star failed to produce corroborating evidence that he was assaulted by MSG security guards. In fact, Sullivan went so far as to write that “as the videos of the incident reveal, it was Oakley—who is six feet, nine inches tall and weighs roughly 270 pounds—who struck the guards, not the other way around.” MSG had the right to expel Oakley from the Garden. A ticket provides a license to enter and remain at the stadium and can be revoked if the ticketholder fails to comply with stadium conduct rules. MSG also had the right to use reasonable force to remove Oakley after he refused to leave. The core legal question in Oakey’s lawsuit is straightforward: Did MSG used excessive force in trying to remove Oakley? Sullivan concluded the answer is no. To that end, the judge stressed testimony by tennis legend John McEnroe, who attended the game as a spectator; he was seated a few rows from Oakley and a couple of seats away from MSG chairman James Dolan. Oakley and Dolan have long feuded, with Oakley accusing Dolan of treating him less favorably than other Knicks legends, including by not providing him complimentary tickets and allegedly disrespecting him in other ways. As Sportico detailed last year, McEnroe remembers MSG employees asking Oakley to leave and Oakley responding by swearing at them. “You’re a f—–g snitch” and “F— you, I ain’t leaving,” McEnroe said he recalled Oakley saying while he was resisting removal. McEnroe also testified that he “saw Oakley slip and fall to the floor,” which Sullivan observed is consistent with other eyewitnesses who said Oakley wasn’t pushed. McEnroe’s testimony is particularly important, Sullivan explained, because while some of the other eyewitnesses were MSG guards or had been employed by MSG at some point, McEnroe had no such ties to the defendant. Oakley’s attorneys from Wigdor Law say they will appeal Sullivan’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which twice before reversed Sullivan’s dismissals of the lawsuit and remanded the case for further proceedings. Wigdor Law maintains there are “conflicting accounts” about what transpired at that Knicks game “and only a jury can decide what exactly happened.” In explaining his decision on Friday, Sullivan emphasized that new video evidence and “numerous sworn declarations from eyewitnesses” confirm that Oakley wasn’t pushed to the ground. Sullivan wrote that only one witness, Oakley himself, supports the assault allegation, despite the incident having occurred “in the middle of Madison Square Garden and in front of 19,000 fans and scores of video cameras.” “While the parties contest whether Oakley had been belligerent prior to his removal,” Sullivan added, “and whether he was intoxicated, there is no dispute that Oakley was asked to leave the arena and that he refused to comply.” The judge further described available video evidence showing “the exact opposite” of Oakley’s assertion that he was pushed from behind. “It is hard to imagine a clearer depiction of an accidental slip,” Sullivan wrote. Another problem for Oakley, in Sullivan’s view, was his alteration of drafts of his 2022 autobiography, The Last Enforcer: Outrageous Stories From the Life and Times of One of the NBA’s Fiercest Competitors (Gallery Books). Sullvan found it problematic that Oakley’s attorneys “directed him to re-write” passages to allegedly make them more consistent with the legal claims. The drafts included Oakley writing he “slipped” but the language was later changed to say he was pushed. Sullivan, who was a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York when Oakley filed his lawsuit in 2017 and was later elevated to the 2nd Circuit, acknowledged that a question of whether reasonable force was used is ordinarily one that a jury would decide. But “after nine years of litigation, an accumulated tidal wave of evidence—including the first draft of the plaintiff’s own autobiography—blatantly contradicts [Oakley’s] allegations, the court must award summary judgment,” Sullivan bluntly concluded. In a statement, MSG praised Sullivan’s writing saying it shows how “Mr. Oakley’s lawyers have pursued claims they knew were false.” In addition to Oakley’s forthcoming appeal to the 2nd Circuit, Oakley v. MSG will continue because both sides are pursuing Rule 11 sanctions against the other side’s attorneys. Sullivan has not yet decided whether the attorneys in the case engaged in bad-faith practices that amounted to harassment and needlessly drove up costs and wasted the court’s time. For a case that involves a remarkably simple legal topic—whether excessive force was used when a ticket holder was kicked out of a game—Oakley v. MSG has likely amounted to millions of dollars in legal fees and will have been in court for nine full years as of Sept. 12. Although Oakley’s relationship with MSG and Dolan remains litigious, he still celebrated the Knicks winning the NBA Finals in June. He didn’t join the team’s championship parade but greeted fans in Harlem and praised Knicks fans for standing by the team “through every high and low.” Scott Soshnick contributed to this story.