NBA legend Charles Oakley has never been one to mince words, and his latest story about former rival Isiah Thomas might be one of his most explosive yet. Appearing on The Art of Dialogue podcast, the former Knicks enforcer revealed that he and Thomas had a heated confrontation at an Atlanta airport two years ago, one that Oakley believes was an intentional setup.
“Matter of fact, about two years ago, so I’m in the airport in Atlanta. I’m coming up the escalator. Somebody walking up, I’m looking, they walking fast. It was Isiah. He like, yeah, he said, you got something to say to me? Say it to me. I said, What the f**k are you talking about? He said, No. So I got a case going on.”
“And at this time, I don’t know if he was trying to set me up or what, cause he was working with the Knicks. And so somebody got this footage. I don’t know when they gonna let it out. So he followed me all the way up to the top. I’m going to my baggage, get my stuff. And he followed me. I’m like, what the f**k is you doing?”
“I saw the police was over there. I mean, about 40, 50 people seeing this incident. I don’t know when they gonna let it out. So he kept trying to follow me. I said, What the f**k is you doing? He said, no, let’s, let’s square this off. I said, let’s square it off then. So I walk away, he start walking on me again. So by the third time, I’m like, okay, forget it. You better get the f**k around me. And he’s like, yeah, okay. So it was weird, weird for him to walk up on me and try to approach me.”
According to Oakley, the exchange quickly escalated from confusion to confrontation. Thomas reportedly followed him through the terminal, refusing to back down even as Oakley tried to disengage.
Oakley suggested that Thomas was trying to provoke him into a public altercation, potentially to damage his reputation. At the time, Oakley was involved in an ongoing legal case related to his dispute with the New York Knicks, and he suspected Thomas, who was reportedly connected with the organization, might have had ulterior motives.
The retired forward added that dozens of people witnessed the incident, and some even recorded it. Oakley said he was surprised no one had leaked the footage yet, given how quickly viral moments spread today.
The tension between Oakley and Thomas stretches back decades, tracing to their fierce rivalry during the late 1980s and early 1990s when Oakley’s Knicks clashed with Thomas’s Detroit Pistons. The bad blood never truly faded. Oakley has criticized Thomas multiple times over the years, both for his role with the Pistons’ infamous ‘Bad Boys’ and for his controversial tenure in Knicks management.
If Oakley’s story is accurate, it’s yet another chapter in one of the NBA’s most enduring personal feuds. The former Knicks bruiser made it clear he avoided physical retaliation, but not because he wasn’t tempted.
For now, the alleged airport footage remains unseen, but if it ever surfaces, it could finally reveal how close two NBA legends came to turning a decades-old rivalry into a real-life brawl.
