Former New York Knicks forward Charles Oakley says no thanks, he won't step foot in Madison Square Garden.

Not during these NBA playoffs, and certainly not as long as he has an ongoing lawsuit against Madison Square Garden and team owner James Dolan over a tussle with security at a 2017 game that got Oakley ejected from the arena.

"I guess their lawyer called my lawyer saying it's a good time for you to come back to the Garden," Oakley told The Associated Press on Friday.

Oakley, the former NBA enforcer and rebounding machine with the 1990s Knicks, said he has no interest -- though he continued to root for the team -- in coming back as long as he remains in a dispute with Dolan.

Oakley was arrested in 2017 after an altercation with MSG security officials when they told him to leave his seat at the arena near Dolan. Oakley was cleared of misdemeanor assault charges in 2018.

So what would it take for Oakley to sit courtside at the Garden?

"They've got to apologize," he said. "We'll go from there. Can [Dolan] be man enough to say, 'Mistakes happen.' And he made one."

Oakley brought assault and battery claims against Dolan, and an amended lawsuit was filed last month. An order Thursday assigned it to Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron to handle going forward.

"Just be honest," Oakley said. "Just be transparent over what you put someone through and how you changed their life. This definitely changed my life. My daughter Googled me, they show them pulling me out of the Garden. That's bad. That's hell for a kid to see that."

MSG has denied all claims.

"There's no kind of agreement. There's no kind of, 'Let's make this go away,'" Oakley said. "They're not being transparent about what happened."

Behind Jalen Brunson, the Knicks are enjoying an NBA renaissance. Despite a loss in Game 3 on Friday night, they still hold a 2-1 series lead in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Indiana Pacers.

Oakley, 60, played for the Knicks from 1988 to 1998, helping them reach the NBA Finals, but he has a splintered relationship with the team because of his past criticism of Dolan.

"It's been a struggle the last seven years," Oakley said. "There have been things said that weren't true. The league didn't step in. The commissioner is pretty soft. He didn't do nothing. The city got behind me, and I'm always behind the fans. I love that."

Oakley had alleged assault, battery and false imprisonment along with defamation after Dolan and the Knicks implied he had a problem with alcohol. Oakley was sitting near Dolan at a game on Feb. 8, 2017. He was approached by security soon after arriving and began to scuffle with them before he was removed from his seat and arrested.

"I don't want to get in their way. They're playing great," Oakley said. "I'm going to cheer at the guys to do well. I'm not mad at nobody on the floor."

Oakley stirred some ill will recently toward his former teammates when he was a guest on a SiriusXM show and said Brunson was the best Knicks player since Walt Frazier. It was a slight that got back to Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing, Oakley's former Knicks teammate whom he has feuded off and on with since they retired.

Ewing took the high road on another NBA podcast and declined to enter the debate.

"They said leadership was a big thing and Patrick wasn't a great leader," Oakley told the AP. "Brunson, I think, was way more a leader."

Oakley said at one point Dolan promised to retire his jersey but was only trying to make amends now "for a photo op. It's all about him."

"He doesn't want to apologize," Oakley said. "What he did was wrong. But the team is playing well. The Rangers are too. It's like 1994 all over again."

The Knicks lost to the Houston Rockets in seven games in that year's NBA Finals, but the Rangers won the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1940 a few days earlier.

Here's the bottom line: Oakley "would love to go" to MSG to see a Knicks game -- as long as Dolan makes things right.

"I think it's a bad time to ask me to come to a game," Oakley said. "The case is still going. You ain't trying to settle a case. The case is still pending. Take care of your business with the case and let the game worry about the game, you know what I'm saying? You're not doing anything special. If you were trying to do something special, you wouldn't have done this."

HENDERSON, Nev. -- While the Las Vegas Raiders' Jayden Daniels-or-bust game plan ended without the rookie, their pending quarterback battle between the returning Aidan O'Connell and veteran free agent signee Gardner Minshew has an early leader.

"Aidan's earned the right to go out there and get the first snap," Raiders coach Antonio Pierce said Friday. "What he's done this offseason -- changing his body, his work ethic, being here every day, blocking out the outside noise. He's not worried about anything. I'm excited.

"Then you bring Gardner in here ... talk about personality. ... It's great. It's great for our building. It's great for our quarterback room. And if you got competition in the quarterback room, what does every other room look at?"

The Raiders had been heavily linked to Daniels, as Pierce brought him to Arizona State when he was the Sun Devils' recruiting coordinator. But the Washington Commanders were set on the Heisman Trophy winner who had transferred to LSU and selected Daniels with the No. 2 overall pick.

By the time the Raiders were on the clock at No. 13, six quarterbacks had been drafted. Las Vegas went with the best player available on its board and took three-time All-America tight end Brock Bowers out of Georgia.

Raiders general manager Tom Telesco said after the draft that no trade opportunity to move up arose in the first round and that they had no interest in drafting a quarterback after Day 1.

Instead, O'Connell and Minshew have been steady presences at the Raiders' facility throughout the offseason workout program. The Raiders also have two other quarterbacks on the roster in Anthony Brown Jr. and undrafted rookie Carter Bradley, who signed out of South Alabama after the draft.

"What I see is guys getting out there early," Pierce said. "Aidan is already kind of taking the bull by the horn and he's leading the way, and Minshew's right there doing it as well. Two guys that played against each other last year, they went neck to neck. But I'm really excited to see what happens. I think it's going to be a process. We're going to stick to the process."

O'Connell was the final pick of the fourth round in 2023, at No. 135 overall. He replaced a concussed Jimmy Garoppolo in a Week 4 loss at the Los Angeles Chargers and then again -- this time for good -- after Pierce was elevated to interim coach in the wake of the Halloween night firings of coach Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler.

O'Connell went 5-5 in 10 starts as a rookie and threw eight touchdown passes without an interception in the Raiders' final four games. He completed 62.1% of his passes for 2,218 yards with 12 touchdowns and seven interceptions in 11 games, finishing with an 83.9 passer rating and a QBR of 40.5. Mobility and pocket awareness were issues on occasion, as he was sacked 24 times.

Minshew, meanwhile, is on his fourth team in five years. He went 7-6 for the Indianapolis Colts last season, including a New Year's Eve win over O'Connell and the Raiders, and had 3,305 passing yards with 15 touchdowns and nine interceptions.

"Aidan has a certain thing mentally where he blocks out outside noise. He doesn't worry about it," Pierce said. "I'm sure he reads, like we all do, but when he comes to work, he's focused, he's prepared, he studies, he puts the time in. There's been conversations that we've had that I've seen him grow in this short period of time in the offseason. I'm really excited to see Aidan as we go through OTAs, minicamp and training camp."